# Jerusalem. The Emanation of the Giant Albion/Plate 91

Written and etched 1804-1820. Source: Blake: The Complete Poetry & Prose (David. V. Erdman) In the internet: www.blakearchive.org
* PLATE 91
* It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend:
* The man who permits you to injure him, deserves your vengeance:
* He also will recieve it; go Spectre! obey my most secret desire:
* Which thou knowest without my speaking: Go to these Fiends of Righteousness
* 5 Tell them to obey their Humanities, & not pretend Holiness;
* When they are murderers: as far as my Hammer & Anvil permit
* Go, tell them that the Worship of God, is honouring his gifts
* In other men: & loving the greatest men best, each according
* To his Genius: which is the Holy Ghost in Man; there is no other
* 10 God, than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity;
* He who envies or calumniates: which is murder & cruelty,
* Murders the Holy-one: Go tell them this & overthrow their cup,
* Their bread, their altar-table, their incense & their oath:
* Their marriage & their baptism, their burial & consecration:
* 15 I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts but have only
* Made enemies: I never made friends but by spiritual gifts;
* By severe contentions of friendship & the burning fire of thought.
* He who would see the Divinity must see him in his Children
* One first, in friendship & love; then a Divine Family, & in the midst
* 20 Jesus will appear; so he who wishes to see a Vision; a perfect Whole
* Must see it in its Minute Particulars; Organized & not as thou
* O Fiend of Righteousness pretendest; thine is a Disorganized
* And snowy cloud: brooder of tempests & destructive War
* You smile with pomp & rigor: you talk of benevolence & virtue!
* 25 I act with benevolence & virtue & get murderd time after time:
* You accumulate Particulars, & murder by analyzing, that you
* May take the aggregate; & you call the aggregate Moral Law:
* And you call that Swelld & bloated Form; a Minute Particular.
* But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars: & every
* 30 Particular is a Man; a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus.
* So Los cried at his Anvil in the horrible darkness weeping!
* The Spectre builded stupendous Works, taking the Starry Heavens
* Like to a curtain & folding them according to his will
* Repeating the Smaragdine Table of Hermes to draw Los down
* 35 Into the Indefinite, refusing to believe without demonstration[.]
* Los reads the Stars of Albion! the Spectre reads the Voids
* Between the Stars; among the arches of Albions Tomb sublime
* Rolling the Sea in rocky paths: forming Leviathan
* And Behemoth: the War by Sea enormous & the War
* 40 By Land astounding: erecting pillars in the deepest Hell,
* To reach the heavenly arches; Los beheld undaunted furious
* His heavd Hammer; he swung it round & at one blow,
* In unpitying ruin driving down the pyramids of pride
* Smiting the Spectre on his Anvil & the integuments of his Eye
* 45 And Ear unbinding in dire pain, with many blows,
* Of strict severity self-subduing, & with many tears labouring.
* Then he sent forth the Spectre all his pyramids were grains
* Of sand & his pillars: dust on the flys wing: & his starry
* Heavens; a moth of gold & silver mocking his anxious grasp
* 50 Thus Los alterd his Spectre & every Ratio of his Reason
* He alterd time after time, with dire pain & many tears
* Till he had completely divided him into a separate space.
* Terrified Los sat to behold trembling & weeping & howling
* I care not whether a Man is Good or Evil; all that I care
* 55 Is whether he is a Wise Man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness
* And put on Intellect: or my thundrous Hammer shall drive thee
* To wrath which thou condemnest: till thou obey my voice
* So Los terrified cries: trembling & weeping & howling! Beholding