Plate 92



Plate 82 (courtesy of Yale copy of Jerusalem, found at Yale Center for British Art)

Beginning near the end of Plate 91 we read:

"Terrified Los sat to behold trembling & weeping & howling [1]

I care not whether a Man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise Man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness
And put on Intellect: or my thundrous Hammer [2] shall drive thee

To wrath which thou condemnest: till thou obey my voice
So Los terrified cries: trembling & weeping & howling! Beholding

Plate 92:

What do I see? The Briton Saxon Roman Norman amalgamating
In my Furnaces into One Nation the English: & taking refuge
In the Loins of Albion.
The Canaanite united with the fugitive Hebrew, whom she
divided into Twelve, & sold into Egypt[3]
Then scatterd the Egyptian & Hebrew to the four Winds!
This sinful Nation Created in our Furnaces & Looms is Albion
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So Los spoke. Enitharmon answerd in great terror in Lambeths Vale:
The Poets Song draws to its period & Enitharmon is no more.
For if he be that Albion I can never weave him in my Looms[4]
But when he touches the first fibrous thread, like filmy dew
My Looms will be no more & I annihilate vanish for ever
Then thou wilt Create another Female according to thy Will.
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Los answerd swift as the shuttle of gold. Sexes must vanish &
cease To be, when Albion arises from his dread repose O lovely
Enitharmon: When all their Crimes, their Punishments their Accusations of Sin:
All their Jealousies Revenges. Murders. hidings of Cruelty in Deceit
Appear only in the Outward Spheres of Visionary Space and Time.
In the shadows of Possibility by Mutual Forgiveness forevermore
And in the Vision & in the Prophecy, that we may Foresee & Avoid
The terrors of Creation & Redemption & Judgment.
Beholding them Displayd in the Emanative Visions of Canaan in Jerusalem & in
Shiloh And in the Shadows of Remembrance, & in the Chaos of the Spectre Amalek,
Edom, Egypt, Moab, Ammon, Ashur, Philistea, around Jerusalem
(Erdman 252) -
Where the Druids reard their Rocky Circles to make permanent
Remembrance Of Sin. & the Tree of Good & Evil sprang from the Rocky Circle &
Snake Of the Druid, along the Valley of Rephaim from Camberwell to Golgotha
And framed the Mundane Shell Cavernous in Length Bredth & Highth"

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[1] Los had been listening to the horrid words of the Spectre, recorded earlier (in Plate 91)

[2] The hammer is "metaphorically connected to the beating of the human heart.

[3] Here Blake has made an obvious reference to the Book of Exodus.

[4] The loom is Enitharmon’s equivalent of Los’ hammer; he was a blacksmith; she was a weaver.