# Europe a Prophecy/A Prophecy

* A PROPHECY
* The deep of winter came,
* What time the secret child
* Descended thro’ the orient gates of the eternal day.
* War ceas’d, & all the troops like shadows fled to their abodes.
* Then Enitharmon saw her sons & daughters rise around;
* Like pearly clouds they meet together in the crystal house;
* And Los, possessor of the moon, joy’d in the peaceful night,
* Thus speaking, while his num’rous sons shook their bright fiery wings:
* ‘Again the night is come
* That strong Urthona takes his rest,
* And Urizen unloos’d from chains
* Glows ike a meteor in the distant north.
* Stretch forth your hands and strike the elemental strings!
* Awake the thunders of the deep,
* ‘The shrill winds wake!
* Till all the sons of Urizen look out and envy Los:
* Seize all the spirits of life and bind
* Their warbling joys to our loud strings;
* Bind all the nourishing sweets of earth
* To give us bliss, that we may drink the sparkling wine of Los;
* And let us laugh at war,
* Despising toil and care,
* Because the days and nights of joy in lucky hours renew.’
* ‘Arise, O Orc, from thy deep den,
* First born of Enitharmon, rise!
* And we will crown thy head with garlands of the ruddy vine;
* For now thou art bound,
* And I may see thee in the hour of bliss, my eldest born.’
* The horrent Demon rose, surrounded with red stars of fire,
* Whirling about in furious circles round the immortal fiend.
* Then Enitharmon down descended into his red light,
* And thus her voice rose to her children; the distant heavens reply:
* ‘Now comes the night of Enitharmon’s joy!
* Who shall I call? Who shall I send?
* That Woman, lovely Woman! may have dominion?
* Arise, O Rintrah, thee I call! & Palamabron, thee!
* Go! tell the human race that Woman’s love is Sin;
* That an Eternal life awaits the worms of sixty winters
* In an allegorical abode where existence hath never come.
* Forbid all Joy, & from her childhood shall the little female
* Spread nets in every secret path.
* ‘My weary eyelids draw towards the evening, my bliss is yet but new!
* ‘Arise, O Rintrah, eldest born, second to none but Orc.
* O lion Rintrah, raise thy fury form thy forests black;
* Bring Palamabron, horned priest, skipping upon the mountains,
* And silent Elynittria, the silver bowed queen.
* Rintrah, where has thou hid thy bride?
* Weeps she in desart shades?
* Alas, my Rintrah! bring all thy brethren, O thou king of fire.
* Prince of the sun, I see thee with thy innumberable race,
* Thick as the summer stars;
* But each ramping his golden mane shakes,
* And thine eyes rejoice because of strength, O Rintrah, furious king.’
* Enitharmon slept,
* Eighteen hundred years. Man was a Dream!
* The night of Nature and their harps unstrung.
* She slept in middle of her nightly song,
* Eighteen hundred years, a female dream.
* Shadows of men in fleeting bands upon the winds
* Divide the heavens of Europe,
* Till Albion’s Angel, smitten with his own plagues, fled with his bands.
* The cloud bears hard on Albion’s shore,
* Fill’d with immortal demons of futurity.
* In council gather the smitten Angels of Albion.
* The cloud bears hard upon the council house, down rushing
* On the heads of Albion’s Angels.
* One hour they lay buried beneath the ruins of that hall;
* But as the stars rise from the salt lake they arise in pain,
* In troubled mists o’erclouded by the terrors of struggling times.
* In thoughts perturb’d they rose from the bright ruins, silent following
* The fiery King, who sought his ancient temple serpertform’d
* That stretches out its shady length along the Island white.
* Round him roll’d his clouds of war; silent the Angel went,
* Along the infininte shores of Thames to golden Verulam.
* There stand the venerable porches that high-towering rear
* Their oak-surrounded pillars, form’d of massy stones, uncut
* Will tool, stones precious – such eternal in the heavens,
* Of colours twelve, few known on earth, give light in the opake,
* Plac’d in the order of the stars. When the five senses whelm’d
* In deluge o’er the earth-born man, then turn’d the fluxile eyes
* Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things;
* The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens
* Were bended downward, and the nostrils’ golden gate shut,
* Turn’d outward, barr’d and petrify’d against the infinite.
* Thought chang’d the infinite to a serpent, that which pitieth
* To a devouring flame; and man fled from its face and hid
* In forests of night. Then all the eternal forests were divided
* Into earths rolling in circles of space, that like an ocean rush’d
* And overwhelmed all except this finite wall of flesh.
* Then was the serpent temple form’d, image of infinite
* Shut up in finite revolutions, and man became an Angel,
* Heaven a mighty circle turning, god a tyrant crown’d.
* Now arriv’d the ancient Guardian at the southern porch
* That, planted thick with trees of blackest leaf, & in a vale
* Obscure, inclos’d the stone of Night. Oblique it stood, o’erhung
* With purple flowers and berries red, image of that sweet south
* Once open to the heavens and elevated on the human neck,
* Now overgrown with hair and cover’d with a stony roof.
* Downward ‘tis sunk beneath th’ attractive north, that round the feet
* A raging whirlpool draws the dizzy enquirer to his grave.
* Albion’s Angel rose upon the Stone of Night.
* He saw Urizen on the Atlantic;
* And his brazen Book
* That Kings & Priests had copied on earth
* Expanded from North to South.
* And the clouds & fires pale roll’d round in the night of Enitharmon,
* Round Albion’s cliffs & London’s walls (still Enitharmon slept);
* Rolling volumes of grey mist involve Churches, Palaces, Towers;
* For Urizen unclasp’d his Book, feeding his soul with pity.
* Thy youth of England, hid in gloom, curse the pain’d heavens, compell’d
* Into the deadly night to see the form of Albion’s Angel.
* Their parents brought them forth, & aged ignorance preaches, canting,
* On a vast rock, perceived by those senses that are clos’d from thought –
* Bleak, dark, abrupt it stands & overshadows London city.
* They saw his boney feet on the rock, the flesh consum’d in flames;
* They saw the Serpent temple lifted above, shadowing the Island white;
* They heard the voice of Albion’s Angel howling in flames of Orc,
* Seeking the trump of the last doom.
* Above the rest the howl was heard from Westminster louder and louder.
* The Guardian of the secret codes forsook his ancient mansion,
* Driven out by the flames of Orc; his furr’d robes & false locks
* Adhered and grew one with his flesh, and nerves & veins shot thro’ them.
* With dismal torment sick, hanging upon the wind, he fled
* Groveling along Great George Street thro’ the Park gate; all the soldiers
* Fled from his sight; he drag’d his torments to the wilderness.
* Thus was the howl thro’ Europe!
* For Orc rejoic’d to hear the howling shadows;
* But Palamabron shot his lightnings trenching down his wide back,
* And Rintrah hung with all his legions in the nether deep.
* Enitharmon laugh’d in her sleep to see (O woman’s triumph)
* Every house a den, every man bound; the shadows are fill’d
* With specters, and the windows wove over with curses of iron;
* Over the doors ‘Thou shalt not,’ & over the chimneys “Fear’ is written;
* With bands of iron round their necks fasten’d into the walls
* The citizens; in leaden gives the inhabitants of suburbs
* Walk heavy; soft and bent are the bones of villagers.
* Between the clouds of Urizen the flames of Orc roll heavy
* Around the limbs of Albion’s Guardian, his flesh consuming.
* Howlings & hissings, shrieks & groans & voices of despair
* Arise around him in the cloudy Heavens of Albion. Furious,
* The red limb’d Angel seiz’d, in horror and torment,
* The Trump of the last doom; but he could not blow the iron tube!
* Thrice he assay’d presumptuous to awake the dead to Judgment.
* A mighty Spirit leap’d from the land of Albion,
* Nam’d Newton; he seiz’d the Trump & blow’d the enormous blast!
* Yellow as leaves of Autumn the myriads fo Angelic hosts
* Fell thro’ the wintry skies seeking their graves,
* Rattling their hollow bones in howling and lamentation.
* Then Enitharmon woke, nor knew that she had slept;
* And eighteen hundred years were fled
* As if they had not been.
* She call’d her sons & daughters
* To the sports of night,
* Within her crystal house;
* And thus her song proceeds:
* ‘Arise, Ethinthus! tho’ the earth-worm call,
* Let him call in vain;
* Till the night of holy shadows
* And human solitude is past!
* ‘Ethinthus,, queen of waters, how thou shinest in the sky!
* My daughter, how do I rejoice! for thy children flock around
* Like the gay fishes on the wave when the cold moon drinks the dew.
* Ethinthus! thou art sweet as comforts to my fainting soul,
* For now thy waters warble round the feet of Enitharmon.
* ‘Manathu-Vorcyon! I behold thee flaming in my halls,
* light of thy mother’s soul! I see thy lovely eagles round;
* thy golden wings are my delight, & thy flames of soft delusion.
* ’where is my lureing bird of Edin? Leutha, silent love!
* Leutha, the many colur’d bow delights upon thy wings,
* Soft soul of flowers, Leutha!
* Sweet smiling pestilence! I see thy blushing light;
* Thy daughters many changing
* Revolve like sweet perfumes ascending, O Leutha, silken queen!
* ‘Where is the youthful Antamon, prince of the pearly dew?
* O Antamon, why wilt thou leave thy mother enitharmon?
* Alone I see thee, crystal form,
* Floating upon the bosom’d air
* With lineaments of gratified desire.
* My Antamon, the seven churches of Leutha seek thy love.
* ‘I hear the soft Oothoon in Enitharmon’s tents.
* Why wilt thou give up woman’s secrecy, my melancholy child?
* Between two moments bliss is ripe.
* O Theotormon robb’d of joy, I see thy salt tears flow
* Down the steps of my crystal house.
* ‘Sotha & Thiralatha, secret dwellers of dreamful caves,
* arise and please the horrent fiend with your melodious songs.
* Still all your thunders golden hoof’d, & bind your horses black.
* Orc! smile upon my children!
* Smile, son of my afflictions.
* Arise, O Orc, and give our mountains joy of thy red light.’
* She ceas’d; for All were forth at soport beneath the solemn moon,
* Waking the stars of Urizen with their immortal songs,
* That nature felt thro’ all the pores the enormous revelry,
* Till morning oped the eastern gate.
* Then every on fled to his station, & Enitharmon wept.
* But terrible Orc, when he beheld the morning in the east,
* Shot from the heights of Enitharmon,
* And in the vineyards of red France appear’d the light of his fury.
* The sun glow’d fiery red!
* The furious terrors flew around
* On golden chariots raging, with red wheels dropping with blood;
* The Lions lash their wrathful tails;
* The Tigers couch upon the prey & suck the ruddy tide;
* And Enitharmon groans & cries in anguish and dismay.
* Then Los arose; his head he rear’d in snaky thunders clad,
* And with a cry that shook all nature to the utmost pole
* Call’d all his sons to the strife of blood.