The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

"Does not the great mouth laugh at a gift? & the narrow eyelids mock At the labour that is above payment? and wilt thou take the ape For thy councellor? or the dog for a schoolmaster to thy children? Does he who contemns poverty, and he who turns with abhorrence From usury, feel the same passion, or are they moved alike? How can the giver of gifts experience the delights of the merchant? How the industrious citizen the pains of the husbandman? How different far the fat fed hireling with hollow drum, Who buys whole corn fields into wastes,2 and sings upon the heath: How different their eye and ear! how different the world to them! With what sense does the parson claim the labour of the farmer? What are his nets & gins0 & traps? & how does he surround him snares With cold floods of abstraction, and with forests of solitude, To build him castles and high spires, where kings & priests may dwell? Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot, is bound In spells of law to one she Ioaths; and must she drag the chain Of life, in weary lust? must chilling murderous thoughts obscure The clear heaven of her eternal spring? to bear the wintry rage Of a harsh terror, driv'n to madness, bound to hold a rod Over her shrinking shoulders all the day, & all the night To turn the wheel of false desire, and longings that wake her womb To the abhorred birth of cherubs in the human form That live a pestilence & die a meteor & are no more; Till the child dwell with one he hates, and do the deed he loaths, And the impure scourge force his seed into its unripe birth E'er yet his eyelids can behold the arrows of the day?3

9. The last line of The Marriage of Heaven and wealthy landowner who converts fertile fields into Hell proclaims: "One Law for the Lion & Ox is a game preserve and to the recruiting officer ("with Oppression." hollow drum") who strips the land of its agricul1. This is the first occurrence of the name "Uri-tural laborers. zen" in Blake (the name can be pronounced either 3. The reference is to the begetting of children, as "your reason" or as an echo of "horizon"). Ooth-both in actual slavery and in the metaphoric slavery oon's liberated vision recognizes the error in the of a loveless marriage, from generation to genera- way God is conceived in conventional religion. tion. 2. Probably a compressed allusion both to the

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108 / WILLIAM BLAKE

"Does the whale worship at thy footsteps as the hungry dog? Or does he scent the mountain prey, because his nostrils wide

35 Draw in the ocean? does his eye discern the flying cloud As the raven's eye? or does he measure the expanse like the vulture? Does the still spider view the cliffs where eagles hide their young? Or does the fly rejoice because the harvest is brought in? Does not the eagle scorn the earth & despise the treasures beneath?

40 But the mole knoweth what is there, & the worm shall tell it thee. Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering church yard,

PLATE 6 And a palace of eternity in the jaws of the hungry grave? Over his porch these words are written: 'Take thy bliss O Man! And sweet shall be thy taste & sweet thy infant joys renew!' "Infancy, fearless, lustful, happy! nestling for delight s In laps of pleasure; Innocence! honest, open, seeking The vigorous joys of morning light, open to virgin bliss, Who taught thee modesty, subtil modesty? Child of night & sleep, When thou awakest wilt thou dissemble all thy secret joys, Or wert thou not awake when all this mystery was disclos'd? 10 Then com'st thou forth a modest virgin, knowing to dissemble, With nets found under thy night pillow to catch virgin joy, And brand it with the name of whore, & sell it in the night, In silence, ev'n without a whisper, and in seeming sleep.4 Religious dreams and holy vespers light thy smoky fires; 15 Once were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn. And does my Theotormon seek this hypocrite modesty, This knowing, artful, secret, fearful, cautious, trembling hypocrite? Then is Oothoon a whore indeed! and all the virgin joys Of life are harlots, and Theotormon is a sick man's dream, 20 And Oothoon is the crafty slave of selfish holiness. "But Oothoon is not so; a virgin fill'd with virgin fancies Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears. If in the morning sun I find it, there my eyes are fix'd

PLATE 7

In happy copulation; if in evening mild, wearied with work, Sit on a bank and draw the pleasures of this free born joy.

"The moment of desire! the moment of desire! The virgin That pines for man shall awaken her womb to enormous joys

In the secret shadows of her chamber; the youth shut up from The lustful joy shall forget to generate & create an amorous image In the shadows of his curtains and in the folds of his silent pillow.5