Analysis of The Song of Los



I will sing you a song of Los. the Eternal Prophet:
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity.
In heart-formed Africa.
Urizen faded! Ariston shudderd!
And thus the Song began

Adam stood in the garden of Eden:
And Noah on the mountains of Ararat;
They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations
By the hands of the children of Los.

Adam shudderd! Noah faded! black grew the sunny African
When Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brama in the East:
(Night spoke to the Cloud!
Lo these Human form'd spirits in smiling hipocrisy. War
Against one another; so let them War on; slaves to the eternal Elements)
Noah shrunk, beneath the waters;
Abram fled in fires from Chaldea;
Moses beheld upon Mount Sinai forms of dark delusion:

To Trismegistus. Palamabron gave an abstract Law:
To Pythagoras Socrates & Plato.

Times rolled on o'er all the sons of Har, time after time
Orc on Mount Atlas howld, chain'd down with the Chain of Jealousy
Then Oothoon hoverd over Judah & Jerusalem
And Jesus heard her voice (a man of sorrows) he recievd
A Gospel from wretched Theotormon.

The human race began to wither, for the healthy built
Secluded places, fearing the joys of Love
And the disease'd only propagated:
So Antamon call'd up Leutha from her valleys of delight:
And to Mahomet a loose Bible gave.
But in the North, to Odin, Sotha gave a Code of War,
Because of Diralada thinking to reclaim his joy.

These were the Churches: Hospitals: Castles: Palaces:
Like nets & gins & traps to catch the joys of Eternity
And all the rest a desart;
Till like a dream Eternity was obliterated & erased.

Since that dread day when Har and Heva fled.
Because their brethren & sisters liv'd in War & Lust;
And as they fled they shrunk
Into two narrow doleful forms:
Creeping in reptile flesh upon
The bosom of the ground:
And all the vast of Nature shrunk
Before their shrunken eyes.

Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave
Laws & Religions to the sons of Har binding them more
And more to Earth: closing and restraining:
Till a Philosophy of Five Senses was complete
Urizen wept & gave it into the hands of Newton & Locke

Clouds roll heavy upon the Alps round Rousseau & Voltaire:
And on the mountains of Lebanon round the deceased Gods
Of Asia; & on the deserts of Africa round the Fallen Angels
The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent

The Kings of Asia heard
The howl rise up from Europe!
And each ran out from his Web;
From his ancient woven Den;
For the darkness of Asia was startled
At the thick-flaming, thought-creating fires of Orc.

And the Kings of Asia stood
And cried in bitterness of soul.

Shall not the King call for Famine from the heath?
Nor the Priest, for Pestilence from the fen?
To restrain! to dismay! to thin!
The inhabitants of mountain and plain;
In the day, of full-feeding prosperity;
And the night of delicious songs.

Shall not the Councellor throw his curb
Of Poverty on the laborious?
To fix the price of labour;
To invent allegoric riches:

And the privy admonishers of men
Call for fires in the City
For heaps of smoking ruins,
In the night of prosperity & wantonness

To turn man from his path,
To restrain the child from the womb,

To cut off the bread from the city,
That the remnant may learn to obey.
That the pride of the heart may fail;
That the lust of the eyes may be quench'd:
That the delicate ear in its infancy

May be dull'd; and the nostrils clos'd up;
To teach mortal worms the path
That leads from the gates of the Grave.

Urizen heard them cry!
And his shudd'ring waving wings
Went enormous above the red flames
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;

For Adam, a mouldering skeleton
Lay bleach'd on the garden of Eden;
And Noah as white as snow
On the mountains of Ararat.

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!

Forth from the dead dust ratt


Scheme ABCAD EFGX EXHIXXAE XJ XBKAD XLXXMIX NBAX XXOXXXOX MIPXX XXXQ XRXSXC XX XSXXBX XTXN SBGG UX BXXAB RUM XXXGQXX P CXK EEJF HL TXXXO A
Poetic Form
Metre 11110111001010 111111101010100 011100 11011 010101 1010010110 0101010110 1111111010 101101011 101101011010100 11101010011001 11101 111011001011 01101011111110010100 10101010 01101011 1010111111010 11111011 111010 11110101111101 111101111011100 11110100100 0101010111011 0101101 01010111010101 01010100111 00110100 111111010101 01101101 1001110110111 01111010111 100101010100 1111110110100 010101 110101001010001 111111011 01110101011 011111 01110101 10010101 010101 01011101 011101 1010011111 1010101111011 0111100010 1001001110101 111101011101 1110010110101 01010110010011 11010101100101010 010011100101101 011101 0111110 0111111 1110101 1010110110 1011010101011 0011101 01010011 11011110101 1011100101 10110111 0010011001 00111100100 00110101 1101111 1100100100 110111 101110 0010111 11100010 1111010 001101001 111111 10101101 111011010 101011101 10110111 101101111 10100101100 111001011 1110101 11101101 1111 011101 101001011 1011011010 110111 01111101 101001111 10101010 01110010 0101101 0111100100 11001100 111010110 0101111 1010110 1010111001 11101001 110001010 0110101100101 101011001 0101 1 110111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 4,190
Words 763
Sentences 37
Stanzas 25
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 8, 2, 5, 7, 4, 8, 5, 4, 6, 2, 6, 4, 4, 2, 5, 3, 7, 1, 3, 4, 2, 5, 1
Lines Amount 107
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 131
Words per stanza (avg) 30
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 10, 2023

3:53 min read
127

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter and printmaker. more…

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