Allen Ginsberg continues – on “America -A Prophecy”
AG: (reading Blake): …then rolld they back with fury/On Albions Angels; then the Pestilence began in streaks of red/Across the limbs of Albions Guardian, the spotted plague smote Bristols/And the Leprosy Londons Spirit, sickening all their bands:/The millions sent up a howl of anguish and threw off their hammerd mail,/And cast their swords & spears to earth, & stood a naked multitude.
Well, in 1780, there were riots in Bristol in London, according to Alicia Ostriker, and they are described at great length in Erdman’s Prophet Against Empire
“(T)he spotted plague smote Bristols”… “..streaks of red/Across the limbs of Albion.” What is that except as in our own time remember, “Bring the war home!” It was the Youth Against War and Fascism bringing the war home, from Boston to New Haven to New York. The Vietnam fantasy bomb that gutted New York’s soul – the same thing. Just as (later in) America. The parallel with the Vietnam War and its effect on America in actually devastating the cities and reducing the American soul to some kind of panic and fear, is exactly what happened during the American and French Revolutions during George III’s and Pitt’s time. The karmic horror of their own aggression abroad – the force used – recoiled back in a plague and caused inflation and rioting in England, leading to riots in Bristol and London. Leprosy. “(L)eprosy, Londons Spirit” at that point, sickening all their bands. And, quite literally George III went insane, and so there’s a picture of Urizen, or
“Albions Guardian writhed in torment on the eastern sky/Pale quivring toward the brain his glimmering eyes” – (In other words, “Pale quivring toward the brain his glimmering eyes”, would be, the eyes looking up into the brain, mad…. ) “teeth chattering/Howling & shuddering his legs quivering; convols’d each muscle & sinew/Sick’ning lay Londons Guardian,
I think I read, did I not, from that description of mad King George, or George’s madness? Did I read that aloud in class, in Erdman’s Prophet Against Empire ?
Student: In..
AG: Yeah.
Student: Yeah.
AG: Yeah. I think I read a piece of that.
Audio for the above can be heard – here, beginning at approximately thirty-three minutes in and concluding at approximately thirty-three-and-three-quarter minutes in