A Little Boy Lost
AG: “Nought loves another as itself/Nor venerates another so./Nor is it possible to Thought/A greater than itself to know..”
That’s an interesting line. The thought forms, therefore bound, are bound by their own … the medium is the message. “Nor is it possible to Thought/A greater than itself to know.” Only imagination or vision would go beyond Newtonian thought, rational, Urizenic, logical, conceptual mind.
“And Father….” So the thought, actually, is “One thought (that) fills Immensity.” “One thought fills Immensity.” And that would be Jehovah, or father, or priest.
“And Father, how can I love you,/Or any of my brothers more?/I love you like the little bird/That picks up crumbs around the door./. The Priest sat by and heard the child./In trembling zeal he siez’d his hair:/He led him by his little coat:/ And all admir’d the Priestly care./ And standing on the altar high,/Lo what a fiend is here! said he:/One who sets reason up to judge/Of our most holy Mystery./ The weeping child could not be heard/.The weeping parents wept in vain:/They strip’d him to his little shirt./And bound him in an iron chain./. And burn’d him in a holy place,/Where many had been burn’d before:/The weeping parents wept in vain./Are such things done on Albions shore.”
Reed Bye: Do you have a question mark (at the end there, in your copy)?
AG: Well, he says, “Are such things done on Albions shore.” He didn’t say, “Such things are done on Albions (shore).” It’s sort of half-ironic. I was reading it a little too naively.
Reed Bye: But there seems to be some differences, as (to intention)
AG: I was hamming it up. I don’t have a question mark here in mine. I have the same text as you. “Are such things done on Albions shore” could be flatter.
So that’s love repressed again, or just individual humanity as well as love in all these repressed or misunderstood.
A Little Girl Lost
“Children of the future Age,/Reading this indignant page:/Know that in a former time,/Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime./ In the Age of Gold,/ Free from winters cold:/Youth and maiden bright,/ To the holy light,/ Naked in the sunny beams delight./ Once a youthful pair/ Fill’d with softest care:/Met in garden bright,/ Where the holy light,/ Had just removd the curtains of the night./ There in rising day,/On the grass they play:/ Parents were afar:/ Strangers came not near:/ And the maiden soon forgot her fear./ Tired with kisses sweet/ They agree to meet,/When the silent sleep/Waves o’er heavens deep;/ And the weary tired wanderers weep./ To her father white/Came the maiden bright:/But his loving look,/Like the holy book,/All her tender limbs with terror shook./ Ona! pale and weak!/To thy father speak:/ O the trembling fear!/O the dismal care!/That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair.”
I don’t know what that’s about, actually. The first line is fantastic, Whitmanic prophecy: “Children of the future Age,” which is us, now – “Children of the future Age,/Reading this indignant page:/Know that in a former time,/Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime”
Of course, from a Whitmanic, Gay Lib point of view, this would be a present prophecy. “Know that in a former time,/Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.” I guess in some respects that’s present.
“In the Age of Gold..” – What is going on in here? Has anybody ever examined this poem carefully? Or checked out Ostriker or anyone? Apparently there was a love exchange between the girl and boy in the pair, and then they agreed to meet beyond the sea of time and space, not merely the land of dreams but meet somewhere in eternity, or meet after death, or meet beyond the body, or to have the marriage beyond body. And then the maiden comes for approval for this to her father, I suppose Jehovah – “his loving look” – (I guess the claim of Urizenic-Jehovaic material world, Garden of Eden mind-trap physical universe, fortified by the Bible) – “All her tender limbs with terror shook.” And then his reaction is funny – “Ona!” (I don’t know who Ona is, actually. That might be interesting to look up.
I like that. I love that first thing – “Children of the future Age.” The whole poem is worth rescuing from its obscurity. O-N-A. Oh, [Allen consults Foster Damon’s Blake Dictionary] “Ona is one of the three daughters of Urizen who make the bread of Orc.” – Revolution – “She is the ‘youngest Woman, clad in shining green’, who divides the River of Generation into four currents” in The Four Zoas “even as the river of Eden was divided into four…. ‘Ona’ is also the name given to “A Little Girl Lost”. “She represents the Loins,” according to Damon’s analysis.
So, the father, white with his holy book who shakes her limbs with terror, is Urizen. (It’s) reason that bars the loving girl of the loins who relates to breakthrough revolution boyfriend from going beyond the sea of time and space to tryst with him in eternity, or to get out of the mind trap of the world.
Then, I’ve been referring to vegetable nature or material nature or, let us say, the rose tree nature – the meat universe – in a sort of Manichaean way all along in this course, because Blake’s Gnostic background does seem to include some element of division between spirit and flesh. Apparently. Except that he keeps saying that you have to die in order to live; in other words you have to be born into a meat body and go through the pillar that the worm erects in the graveyard. So he’s willing, in order to exist, to be in a body and have experience. And Los -poetic imagination – is constantly creating bodies. Actually, as later on we’ll see, Enitharmon, his emanation, is weaving at the looms, creating bodies for spirits. Because, unless some definition and form is given to imagination, it doesn’t come into existence. The fear of coming into existence, like in (The Book of) Thel, is a major theme. But, on the other hand, existence is also only a place to die, and is not to be clung to. So the stepping into body after body after body.
to be continued