Poem
The work begins with a title page image of an empty, dead world with an old man looking at the title of the work. The story of the work begins in Africa with Los singing of Adam, Noah, and Moses and how they were granted laws by Urizen. This involve abstractions being granted to Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato, gospel being given to Jesus, a bible for Mahomet, and a book on war given to Odin. These caused the world to fail, as they were chains that bound the mind:
- 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 (44-48)
In the second half of the work, Asia, Orc creates fires in the mind that causes kings to be startled and an apocalypse of sorts to start:
- The Grave shrieks with delight, & shakes
- Her hollow womb, & clasps the solid stem:
- Her bosom swells with wild desirel
- And mild & glandous wine
- In rivers rush & shout & dance,
- On mountain, dale and plain. (lines 59-63)
Read more about this topic: The Song Of Los
Famous quotes containing the word poem:
“The poem refreshes life so that we share,
For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies
Belief in an immaculate beginning
And sends us, winged by an unconscious will,
To an immaculate end. We move between these points:
From that ever-early candor to its late plural....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The poem is the cry of its occasion,
Part of the res itself and not about it.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)