Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s The Song of Los continues from here
“Urizen heard them cry!/And his shudd’ring waving wings/ Went enormous above the red flames/ Of revolution./ Drawing clouds of despair thro’ the heavens/Of Europe as he went:/And his Books of brass iron & gold/Melted over the land as he flew,/Heavy-waving, howling, weeping./And he stood over Judea:/ And stay’d in his ancient place:/And stretch’d his clouds over Jerusalem..” – (taking his authority from the ancient book) – “For Adam, a mouldering skeleton…” – (Not Albion, but Adam, had become just a mouldering skeleton) -“Lay bleach’d on the garden of Eden;/And Noah as white as snow/ On the mountains of Ararat”
(Which you can see, actually, in these illustrations. It’s either Urizen or “Noah white as snow/On the mountains of Ararat.” (Song of Los, illustration 2, page one-seven-five)
– “the Ancient Man, [Allen then quotes from The Four Zoas] -“Rising upon his Couch of Death Albion beheld his Sons/’Turning his Eyes outward to Self, ‘losing the Divine Vision.'”)
[continuing with The Song of Los]
“Then the thunders of Urizen bellow’d aloud/ From his woven darkness above./Orc, raging in European darkness/Arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps/Like a serpent of fiery flame!/ The sullen Earth/ Shrunk!”
And the “Shrunk!” is just one word on one line. It’s on (plate) seven; illustration number seven
Of course, the observer of all this is kind of sweet, you see. The guy who’s observing all this is in illustration five, on page one-seventy-eight. Blake (or) a fairy in a streaked tulip.
If you want to see Har and Heva fleeing away from war, that’s on page one-seven-seven – The Song of Los – plate four – The Song of Los plate four – That’s Har and Heva looking kind of woe-begotten, woe-begone, scared. Hippies fleeing..
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventy-nine-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately eighty-one-and-three-quarter minutes in