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:
“A poem ... begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.... It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper,... in the poet’s life. It is what he has become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince’s gallery.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)