# Jerusalem. The Emanation of the Giant Albion/Plate 21

Written and etched 1804-1820. Source: Blake: The Complete Poetry & Prose (David. V. Erdman) In the internet: www.blakearchive.org
* PLATE 21
* Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion, copy E, object 21 (Bentley 21, Erdman 21, Keynes 21)
* O Vala! O Jerusalem! do you delight in my groans
* You O lovely forms, you have prepared my death-cup:
* The disease of Shame covers me from bead to feet: I have no hope
* Every boil upon my body is a separate & deadly Sin.
* 5 Doubt first assaild me, then Shame took possession of me
* Shame divides Families. Shame hath divided Albion in sunder!
* First fled my Sons, & then my Daughters, then my Wild Animations
* My Cattle next, last ev'n the Dog of my Gate. the Forests fled
* The Corn-fields, & the breathing Gardens outside separated
* 10 The Sea; the Stars: the Sun: the Moon: drivn forth by my disease
* All is Eternal Death unless you can weave a chaste
* Body over an unchaste Mind! Vala! O that thou wert pure!
* That the deep wound of Sin might be clos'd up with the Needle,
* And with the Loom: to cover Gwendolen & Ragan with costly Robes
* 15 Of Natural Virtue, for their Spiritual forms without a Veil
* Wither in Luvahs Sepulcher. I thrust him from my presence
* And all my Children followd his loud howlings into the Deep.
* Jerusalem! dissembler Jerusalem! I look into thy bosom:
* I discover thy secret places: Cordella! I behold
* 20 Thee whom I thought pure as the heavens in innocence & fear:
* Thy Tabernacle taken down, thy secret Cherubim disclosed
* Art thou broken? Ah me Sabrina, running by my side:
* In childhood what wert thou? unutterable anguish! Conwenna
* Thy cradled infancy is most piteous. O hide, O hide!
* 25 Their secret gardens were made paths to the traveller:
* I knew not of their secret loves with those I hated most,
* Nor that their every thought was Sin & secret appetite
* Hyle sees in fear, he howls in fury over them, Hand sees
* In jealous fear: in stern accusation with cruel stripes
* 30 He drives them thro' the Streets of Babylon before my face:
* Because they taught Luvah to rise into my clouded heavens
* Battersea and Chelsea mourn for Cambel & Gwendolen!
* Hackney and Holloway sicken for Estrild & Ignoge!
* Because the Peak, Malvern & Cheviot Reason in Cruelty
* 35 Penmaenmawr & Dhinas-bran Demonstrate in Unbelief
* Manchester & Liverpool are in tortures of Doubt & Despair
* Malden & Colchester Demonstrate: I hear my Childrens voices
* I see their piteous faces gleam out upon the cruel winds
* From Lincoln & Norwich, from Edinburgh & Monmouth:
* 40 I see them distant from my bosom scoured along the roads
* Then lost in clouds; I hear their tender voices! clouds divide
* I see them die beneath the whips of the Captains! they are taken
* In solemn pomp into Chaldea across the bredths of Europe
* Six months they lie embalmd in Silent death: warshipped
* 45 Carried in Arks of Oak before the armies in the spring
* Bursting their Arks they rise again to life: they play before
* The Armies: I hear their loud cymbals & their deadly cries
* Are the Dead cruel? are those who are infolded in moral Law
* Revengeful? O that Death & Annihilation were the same!
* 50 Then Vala answerd spreading her scarlet Veil over Albion

## Notes

* ↑ 21:37 Childrens] mended from; childrens
* ↑ 21:44 warshipped] possibly an error for worshipped yet quite possibly a punning coinage. Albion's children “Carried in Arks of Oak” are sailors pressed into naval service (thus “warshipped”); the six months of “silent death” would be the fall-winter quiescence before the spring campaigns, or the long sea voyage to Aboukir Bay. To worship them in this whipped condition (line 42) is to warship them in the oaken “arks” of the British navy; compare the sword-bearing half of a soldier pictured in 11 as worshipped by a kneeling congregation. (Polysemous reading suggested by Nelson Hilton.) The “a” is made with the usual serif at top right, never given to an “o”, which is made in a circular sweep. The “a” is made with a curved stroke that begins at the top, comes up to make the serif and down again to connect with the next letter. Of course an “a” can look something like an “o”, but even the “a” in “massy” (misread in America c as “mossy”), which lacks the protruding serif, has the more vertical right side produced by the up-and-down motion described.