AMERICA
A PROPHECY
(1793)
PRELUDIUM
The shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red
Orc, When fourteen suns had faintly journey’d o’er his dark
abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in
cups of iron:
Crown’d with a helmet & dark hair the nameless
female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that
of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven: no other arms
she need!
Invulnerable tho’ naked, save where clouds roll
round her loins
Their awful folds in the dark air: silent she
stood as night;
For never from her iron tongue could voice or
sound arise,
But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay’d his
fierce embrace.
“Dark Virgin,” said the hairy youth, “thy father
stern, abhorr’d,
Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my
spirit soars;
Sometimes an eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes
a lion
Stalking upon the mountains, & sometimes a
whale, I lash
The raging fathomless abyss; anon a serpent
folding
Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark
limbs
On the Canadian wilds I fold; feeble my spirit
folds,
For chain’d beneath I rend these caverns: when
thou bringest food
I howl my joy, and my red eyes seek to behold thy
face—
In vain! these clouds roll to & fro, &
hide thee from my sight.”
Silent as despairing love, and strong as
jealousy,
The hairy shoulders rend the links; free are the
wrists of fire;
Round the terrific loins he siez’d the panting,
struggling womb;
It joy’d: she put aside her clouds & smiled
her first-born smile,
As when a black cloud shews its lightnings to the
silent deep.
Soon as she saw the terrible boy, then burst the
virgin cry:
“I know thee, I have found thee, & I will not
let thee go:
Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness
of Africa,
And thou art fall’n to give me life in regions of
dark death.
On my American plains I feel the struggling
afflictions
Endur’d by roots that writhe their arms into the
nether deep.
I see a Serpent in Canada who courts me to his
love,
In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru;
I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul
away.
O what limb rending pains I feel! thy fire &
my frost
Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy
lightnings rent.
This is eternal death, and this the torment long
foretold.”
A PROPHECY
The Guardian Prince of Albion bums in his nightly
tent:
Sullen fires across the Atlantic glow to America’s
shore,
Piercing the souls of warlike men who rise in
silent night.
Washington, Franklin, Paine & Warren, Gates,
Hancock & Green
Meet on the coast glowing with blood from Albion’s
fiery Prince.
Washington spoke: “Friends of America! look over
the Atlantic sea;
A bended bow is lifted in heaven, & a heavy
iron chain
Descends, link by link, from Albion’s cliffs
across the sea, to bind
Brothers & sons of America till our faces pale
and yellow,
Heads deprest, voices weak, eyes downcast, hands
workbruis’ d,
Feet bleeding on the sultry sands, and the furrows
of the whip
Descend to generations that in future times
forget.”
The strong voice ceas’d, for a terrible blast
swept over the heaving sea:
The eastern cloud rent: on his cliffs stood
Albion’s wrathful Prince,
A dragon form, clashing his scales: at midnight he
arose,
And flam’d red meteors round the land of Albion
beneath;
His voice, his locks, his awful shoulders, and his
glowing eyes
Appear to the Americans upon the cloudy
night.
Solemn heave the Atlantic waves between the gloomy
nations,
Swelling, belching from its deeps red clouds &
raging fires.
Albion is sick! America faints! enrag’d the Zenith
grew.
As human blood shooting its veins all round the
orbed heaven,
Red rose the clouds from the Atlantic in vast
wheels of blood,
And in the red clouds rose a Wonder o’er the
Atlantic sea,
Intense! naked! a Human fire, fierce glowing, as
the wedge
Of iron heated in the furnace: his terrible limbs
were fire
With myriads of cloudy terrors, banners dark &
towers
Surrounded: heat but not light went thro’ the
murky atmosphere.
The King of England looking westward trembles at
the vision.
Albion’s Angel stood beside the Stone of night,
and saw
The terror like a comet, or more like the planet
red
That once enclos’d the terrible wandering comets
in its sphere.
Then, Mars, thou wast our center, & the
planets three flew round
Thy crimson disk: so e’er the Sun was rent from
thy red sphere.
The Spectre glow’d his horrid length staining the
temple long
With beams of blood; & thus a voice came
forth, and shook the temple:
“The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen
leave their stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen
wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov’ring clay, the sinews
shrunk & dry’d
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing,
awakening,
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds
& bars are burst.
Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into
the field,
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in
the bright air;
Let the inchained soul, shut up in darkness and in
sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary
years,
Rise and look out; his chains are loose, his
dungeon doors are open;
And let his wife and children return from the
oppressor’s scourge.
They look behind at every step & believe it is
a dream,
Singing: ‘The Sun has left his blackness & has
found a fresher morning,
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear &
cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf
shall cease.’ ”
In thunders ends the voice. Then Albion’s Angel
wrathful burnt
Beside the Stone of Night, and like the Eternal
Lion’s howl
In famine & war, reply’d: “Art thou not Orc,
who serpent-form’d
Stands at the gate of Enitharmon to devour her
children?
Blasphemous Demon, Antichrist, hater of
Dignities,
Lover of wild rebellion, and transgressor of God’s
Law,
Why dost thou come to Angel’s eyes in this
terrific form?”
The Terror answer’d: “I am Orc, wreath’d round the
accursed tree:
The times are ended; shadows pass, the morning
’gins to break;
The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten
commands,
What night he led the starry hosts thro’ the wide
wilderness,
That stony law I stamp to dust; and scatter
religion abroad
To the four winds as a torn book, & none shall
gather the leaves;
But they shall rot on desart sands, & consume
in bottomless deeps,
To make the desarts blossom, & the deeps
shrink to their fountains,
And to renew the fiery joy, and burst the stony
roof;
That pale religious letchery, seeking
Virginity,
May find it in a harlot, and in coarse-clad
honesty
The undefil’d, tho’ ravish’d in her cradle night
and morn;
For everything that lives is holy, life delights
in life;
Because the soul of sweet delight can never be
defil’d.
Fires inwrap the earthly globe, yet man is not
consum’d;
Amidst the lustful fires he walks; his feet become
like brass,
His knees and thighs like silver, & his breast
and head like gold.”
“Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets, & alarm
my Thirteen Angels!
Loud howls the eternal Wolf! the eternal Lion
lashes his tail!
America is darken’d; and my punishing Demons,
terrified,
Crouch howling before their caverns deep, like
skins dry’d in the wind.
They cannot smite the wheat, nor quench the
fatness of the earth;
They cannot smite with sorrows, nor subdue the
plow and spade;
They cannot wall the city, nor moat round the
castle of princes;
They cannot bring the stubbed oak to overgrow the
hills;
For terrible men stand on the shores, & in
their robes I see
Children take shelter from the lightnings: there
stands Washington
And Paine and Warren with their foreheads rear’d
toward the east.
But clouds obscure my aged sight. A vision from
afar!
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets, & alarm my
thirteen Angels!
Ah vision from afar! Ah rebel form that rent the
ancient
Heavens! Eternal Viper, self-renew’d, rolling in
clouds,
I see thee in thick clouds and darkness on
America’s shore,
Writhing in pangs of abhorred birth; red flames
the crest rebellious
And eyes of death; the harlot womb, oft opened in
vain,
Heaves in enormous circles: now the times are
return’d upon thee,
Devourer of thy parent, now thy unutterable
torment renews.
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets, & alarm my
thirteen Angels!
Ah terrible birth! a young one bursting! where is
the weeping mouth,
And where the mother’s milk? instead, those
ever-hissing jaws
And parched lips drop with fresh gore: now roll
thou in the clouds;
Thy mother lays her length outstretch’d upon the
shore beneath.
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets, & alarm my
thirteen Angels!
Loud howls the eternal Wolf! the eternal Lion
lashes his tail!”
Thus wept the Angel voice, & as he wept, the
terrible blasts
Of trumpets blew a loud alarm across the Atlantic
deep.
No trumpets answer; no reply of clarions or of
fifes:
Silent the Colonies remain and refuse the loud
alarm.
On those vast shady hills between America &
Albion’s shore,
Now barr’d out by the Atlantic sea, call’d
Atlantean hills,
Because from their bright summits you may pass to
the Golden world,
An ancient palace, archetype of mighty
Emperies,
Rears its immortal pinnacles, built in the forest
of God
By Ariston, the king of beauty, for his stolen
bride.
Here on their magic seats the thirteen Angels sat
perturb’ d,
For clouds from the Atlantic hover o’er the solemn
roof.
Fiery the Angels rose, & as they rose deep
thunder roll’d
Around their shores, indignant burning with the
fires of Orc;
And Boston’s Angel cried aloud as they flew thro’
the dark night.
He cried: “Why trembles honesty, and like a
murderer
Why seeks he refuge from the frowns of his
immortal station?
Must the generous tremble & leave his joy to
the idle, to the pestilence,
That mock him? who commanded this? what God? what
Angel?
To keep the gen’rous from experience till the
ungenerous
Are unrestrain’d performers of the energies of
nature;
Till pity is become a trade, and generosity a
science
That men get rich by; & the sandy desart is
giv’n to the strong?
What God is he writes laws of peace & clothes
him in a tempest?
What pitying Angel lusts for tears and fans
himself with sighs?
What crawling villain preaches abstinence &
wraps himself
In fat of lambs? no more I follow, no more
obedience pay!”
So cried he, rending off his robe & throwing
down his scepter
In sight of Albion’s Guardian; and all the
thirteen Angels
Rent off their robes to the hungry wind, &
threw their golden scepters
Down on the land of America; indignant they
descended
Headlong from out their heav’nly heights,
descending swift as fires
Over the land; naked & flaming are their
lineaments seen
In the deep gloom; by Washington & Paine &
Warren they stood;
And the flame folded, roaring fierce within the
pitchy night
Before the Demon red, who burnt towards
America,
In black smoke, thunders, and loud winds,
rejoicing in its terror,
Breaking in smoky wreaths from the wild deep,
& gath’ring thick
In flames as of a furnace on the land from North
to South,
What time the thirteen Governors that England
sent, convene
In Bernard’s house; the flames cover’d the land,
they rouze, they cry;
Shaking their mental chains, they rush in fury to
the sea
To quench their anguish; at the feet of Washington
down fall’n
They grovel on the sand and writhing lie, while
all
The British soldiers thro’ the thirteen states
sent up a howl
Of anguish, threw their swords & muskets to
the earth, & ran
From their encampments and dark castles, seeking
where to hide
From the grim flames, and from the visions of Orc,
in sight
Of Albion’s Angel; who, enrag’d, his secret clouds
open’d
From north to south and burnt outstretch’d on
wings of wrath, cov’ring
The eastern sky, spreading his awful wings across
the heavens.
Beneath him roll’d his num’rous hosts, all
Albion’s Angels camp’d
Darken’d the Atlantic mountains; & their
trumpets shook the valleys,
Arm’d with diseases of the earth to cast upon the
Abyss,
Their numbers forty millions, must’ring in the
eastern sky.
In the flames stood & view’d the armies drawn
out in the sky,
Washington, Franklin, Paine, & Warren, Allen,
Gates, & Lee,
And heard the voice of Albion’s Angel give the
thunderous command;
His plagues, obedient to his voice, new forth out
of their clouds,
Falling upon America, as a storm to cut them
off,
As a blight cuts the tender corn when it begins to
appear.
Dark is the heaven above, & cold & hard
the earth beneath:
And as a plague wind fill’d with insects cuts off
man & beast,
And as a sea o’erwhelms a land in the day of an
earthquake,
Fury! rage! madness! in a wind swept through
America;
And the red flames of Orc, that folded roaring,
fierce, around
The angry shores; and the fierce rushing of th’
inhabitants together!
The citizens of New York close their books &
lock their chests;
The mariners of Boston drop their anchors and
unlade;
The scribe of Pensylvania casts his pen upon the
earth;
The builder of Virginia throws his hammer down in
fear.
Then had America been lost, o’erwhelm’d by the
Atlantic,
And Earth had lost another portion of the
infinite,
But all rush together in the night in wrath and
raging fire.
The red fires rag‘d! the plagues recoil’d! then
roll’d they back with fury
On Albion’s Angels: then the Pestilence began in
streaks of red
Across the limbs of Albion’s Guardian; the spotted
plague smote Bristol’s
And the Leprosy London’s Spirit, sickening all
their bands:
The millions sent up a howl of anguish and threw
off their hammer’d mail,
And cast their swords & spears to earth, &
stood, a naked multitude:
Albion’s Guardian writhed in torment on the
eastern sky,
Pale, quiv’ring toward the brain his glimmering
eyes, teeth chattering,
Howling & shuddering, his legs quivering,
convuls’d each muscle & sinew:
Sick’ning lay London’s Guardian, and the ancient
miterd York,
Their heads on snowy hills, their ensigns
sick’ning in the sky.
The plagues creep on the burning winds driven by
flames of Orc,
And by the fierce Americans rushing together in
the night,
Driven o’er the Guardians of Ireland, and Scotland
and Wales.
They, spotted with plagues, forsook the frontiers;
& their banners, sear’d
With fires of hell, deform their ancient heavens
with shame & woe.
Hid in his caves the Bard of Albion felt the
enormous plagues,
And a cowl of flesh grew o’er his head, &
scales on his back & ribs;
And, rough with black scales, all his Angels
fright their ancient heavens.
The doors of marriage are open, and the Priests in
rustling scales
Rush into reptile coverts, hiding from the fires
of Ore,
That play around the golden roofs in wreaths of
fierce desire,
Leaving the females naked and glowing with the
lusts of youth.
For the female spirits of the dead, pining in
bonds of religion,
Run from their fetters reddening, & in long
drawn arches sitting,
They feel the nerves of youth renew, and desires
of ancient times
Over their pale limbs, as a vine when the tender
grape appears.
Over the hills, the vales, the cities, rage the
red flames fierce:
The Heavens melted from north to south; and
Urizen, who sat
Above all heavens, in thunders wrap’d, emerg’d his
leprous head
From out his holy shrine, his tears in deluge
piteous
Falling into the deep sublime; flag’d with
grey-brow’d snows
And thunderous visages, his jealous wings wav’d
over the deep;
Weeping in dismal howling woe, he dark descended,
howling
Around the smitten bands, clothed in tears &
trembling, shudd’ring cold.
His stored snows he poured forth, and his icy
magazines
He open’d on the deep, and on the Atlantic sea
white shiv’ring
Leprous his limbs, all over white, and hoary was
his visage,
Weeping in dismal howlings before the stern
Americans,
Hiding the Demon red with clouds & cold mists
from the earth;
Till Angels & weak men twelve years should
govern o’er the strong;
And then their end should come, when France
receiv’d the Demon’s light.
Stiff shudderings shook the heav’nly thrones!
France, Spain, & Italy
In terror view’d the bands of Albion, and the
ancient Guardians,
Fainting upon the elements, smitten with their own
plagues.
They slow advance to shut the five gates of their
law-built heaven,
Filled with blasting fancies and with mildews of
despair,
With fierce disease and lust, unable to stem the
fires of Ore.
But the five gates were consum’d, & their
bolts and hinges melted;
And the fierce flames burnt round the heavens
& round the abodes of men.
FINIS