Читать книгу America A Prophecy (Illuminated Manuscript with the Original Illustrations of William Blake) - William Blake - Страница 5

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The shadowy daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc.

When fourteen suns had faintly journey’d o’er his dark abode;

His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron;

Crown’d with a helmet & dark hair the nameless female stood;

A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,

When pestilence is shot from heaven; no other arms she need:

Invulnerable tho’ naked, save where clouds roll round her loins,

Their awful folds in the dark air; silent she stood as night;

For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise;

But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay’d his fierce embrace.

Dark virgin; said the hairy youth, thy father stern abhorr’d;

Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;

Sometimes an eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a lion,

Stalking upon the mountains, & sometimes a whale I lash

The raging fathomless abyss, anon a serpent folding

Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs,

On the Canadian wilds I fold, feeble my spirit folds.

For chaind beneath I rend these caverns; when thou bringest food

I howl my joy! and my red eyes seek to behold thy face

In vain! these clouds roll to & fro, & hide thee from my sight.

Silent as despairing love, and strong as jealousy,

The hairy shoulders rend the links, free are the wrists of fire;

Round the terrific loins he siez’d the panting struggling womb;

It joy’d: she put aside her clouds & smiled her firstborn smile;

As when a black cloud shews its light’nings to the silent deep.

Soon as she saw the terrible boy then burst the virgin cry.

I know thee, I have found thee, & I will not let thee go;

Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa;

And thou art fall’n to give me life in regions of dark death.

On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions

Endur’d by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep:

I see a serpent in Canada, who courts me to his love;

In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru;

I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul away.

O what limb rending pains I feel. thy fire & my frost

Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent;

This is eternal death; and this the torment long foretold.

The stern Bard ceas’d, asham’d of his own song; enrag’d he swung

His harp aloft sounding, then dash’d its shining frame against

A ruin’d pillar in glittring fragments; silent he turn’d away,

And wander’d down the vales of Kent in sick & drear lamentings.