In 1794 Blake engraved his _Europe: A Prophecy_, which is the last of his
poems dealing with contemporaneous political events.
Europe stood for Blake in his rebellious mood as the symbol of tradition,
authority, science, religion. It was the dead past. "Enitharmon slept
eighteen hundred years. Man was a dream, the night of Nature and their
harps unstrung." Europe, during this long sleep, was without vision,
inspiration, art, and true nature. Her religion, divorced from art, was
repressive, and existed by trading on men's fears. Falling under the
tyranny of the five senses, she believed only so much as the senses could
testify of; hence she was rational, utilitarian, unimaginative, and
joyless. She squinted so abominably with such eyes as she had that she saw
nothing as it was. God, man, nature, became creations of man's perverted
reason, and God was used as an efficient policeman to keep insurrectionary
nations in subjection and vital men in order.
But Blake believed that he had already seen the morning star that heralded
the full blaze of the Sun. Already the invisible powers who control
nations and men were stirring and preparing for their last fearful
conflict, which should result in new heavens and a new earth. The angels
were at war. Urizen and his many sons were tightening their sinews for the
last life-and-death grip; against them was Orc, the horrent demon,
"already a kindled and quenchless fire, Los, the spirit of inspiration far
more nearly allied with fiery passion (Orc) than with cold intellectual
reason (Urizen), Los' wife Enitharmon and their many sons and daughters,
Rintrah, Palamabron, Elynittria and Ocalythron. These Ossianic and
Miltonic principalities and powers were waging huge and terrific war in
the heavenly places, and already on earth was kindled in France the
earthly counterpart and shadow of the invisible horrible conflict.
The work of regeneration, once begun, could not be arrested. Passion,
fire, energy, all the irresistible things pent up in hell, were let loose;
and they would involve Europe and the world in an ocean of blood. The
whole cosmos, inward in the heavens, outward in the sun, moon, stars, and
earth, was dyed in crimson, until the tribulation such as was not since
the world began should work up to the grinding pains of labour, and in
infinite pain there should come to the birth the new age of which the
prophets and poets had dreamed in all ages.
"The Sun glow'd fiery red!
The furious Terrors flew around
On golden chariots, raging with red wheels, dropping with blood!
The Lions lash their wrathful tails!
The Tigers couch upon the prey and suck the ruddy tide;
And Enitharmon groans and cries in anguish and dismay.
Then Los arose: his head he reared, in snaky thunders clad;
And with a cry that shook all Nature to the utmost pole,
Called all his sons to the strife of blood."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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