AG: Then “Little Girl Lost” – there’s a sequence here. This is a very strange one, actually. Caves. I was looking up “caves” – “Five windows light the cavern’d man,” (from the beginning of, “I met a fairy sitting on a streaked tulip.”) (Editorial note – “So sang a fairy mocking as he sat on a streaked tulip”), (from the preface to Europe) The cavern is also, in addition to being, remember the first, Bromion and Oothoon and Theotormon seated in the caverns? – in the face. In the cavern’s mouth, or the opening of the skull of the eye socket of the skull. So the cavern is the interior of the body. Plato’s cave, in which you see only shadows but you don’t see outsides of the full expanse of space and the real forms. The chinks in the cavern are the senses. So this ends in a cavern, and the cavern is sometimes a place where they take the dead in Blake. Sometimes. To the caves.
This is a really interesting song, and a mysterious one.
Peter Orlovsky: Which one is this?
AG: “The Little Girl Lost”. I’ve never worked out a perfect melody for it but I’ve got some kind of a scheme that I always liked. This is one of the few poems that has the kind of hypnotic repetition in it that might catalyze some kind of (experience).
In futurity/I prophetic see,/That the earth from sleep,/(Grave the sentence deep)/ Shall arise and seek/For her Maker meek:/And the desert wild/Become a garden mild./. In the southern clime,/Where the summers prime,/Never fades away;/Lovely Lyca lay./ Seven summers old/Lovely Lyca told,/She had wanderd long,/Hearing wild birds song./Sweet sleep come to me/Underneath this tree./Do father, mother, weep./ “Where can Lyca sleep”. ‘Lost in desart wild/Is your little child./How can Lyca sleep,/If her mother weep./’If her heart does ake,/Then let Lyca wake;/If my mother sleep,/Lyca shall not weep./ ‘Frowning frowning night,/O’er this desert bright,/Let thy moon arise,/While I close my eyes./ Sleeping Lyca lay;/While the beasts of prey,/Come from caverns deep,/View’d the maid asleep/ The kingly lion stood/And the virgin view’d,/Then he gambold round/O’er the hallowed ground:/Leopards, tygers play,/Round her as she lay;/While the lion old,/Bow’d his mane of gold./ And her bosom lick,/And upon her neck,/From his eyes of flame,/Ruby tears there came;/ While the lioness,/Loos’d her slender dress,/And naked they convey’d/To caves the sleeping maid.”
What I always liked was some amazing thing. If Lyca is maybe like the Shadowy Female or unawakened nature or maybe like Thel, not yet born, she gets lost from her parents. I’ve never figured it out but she gets lost from her parents and then there’s this repeated hypnotic magical mantric rhyme that goes over and over. Where can Lyca sleep if her mother sleep, Lyca cannot weep. If her heart does ache, then Lyca awke. But “If her heart does ake/Then let Lyca wake.” It seems like some secret signal for wakening of consciousness. If the pain and sorrow of mortal existence is too achy for the heart, then wake from that. So the wakening is meeting the lion of protection and energy. But the lion is very often death in Blake. Death turns into a lion with tears of gold. His runny eye shall flow with tears of gold, and conveys the girl to the caves and then in the end the parents will go look for him and end up in the cave, too, with her, and then everybody will live happily ever after in this cave. So I don’t know how to interpret it, actually. Haven’t read up on it lately. Has anybody read this before? Or looked it over carefully? The main thing I’m getting at is it has this hypnotic repetition.
“In the southern clime,/Where the summers prime,/Never fades away..” – Where is the south? What is the god of the south, or the Zoa of the south? Does anybody remember?
Student: Was that Urizen?
Student: Yes.
Student: Yeah.
AG: Okay. That would make some sense, then. Urizen is in the south?
Student: Yeah.
AG: Well, then maybe it’s just they should be unawakened earth stuck in the realms of reason, in the materialistic universe of reason, or in the Newtonian universe.
Student: Rationalism.
AG: Yeah. And finally she gets lost in the desert or rationalism. But – “How can Lyca sleep,/If her mother weep./If her heart does ake,/Then let Lyca wake..” It’s like “If my mother sleep,/Lyca shall not weep.” So the night rises, death comes to take her away from this rational desert. Well.
Student: Could her name ever be Like-uh?
AG: I always thought it was Lyca at first, but then there is a girl’s name Lisa. Maybe he’s mispelled “Lisa” – Like let Lisa come. I thought Lyca could be. When I first read this for years I said Lyca.
Student: Yeah that was what I understand.
AG: Has anybody got any idea of L-Y-C-A?
Student: Isn’t there is an island Lycia?
AG: Maybe, I don’t know. Lycia. Where? A Greek island.
Student: Greek. Yeah.
AG: I don’t know. I puzzled over this for years. I never read up on it, though. Well, the little girl gets found
to be continued