The Book of Ahania (Chapter V )

字號(hào):


     1. The lamenting voice of Ahania,
     Weeping upon the Void!
     And round the Tree of Fuzon,
     Distant in solitary night,
     Her voice was heard, but no form
     Had she; but her tears from clouds
     Eternal fell round the Tree.
     2. And the voice cried: `Ah, Urizen! Love!
     Flower of morning! I weep on the verge
     Of Nonentity —— how wide the Abyss
     Between Ahania and thee!
     3. `I lie on the verge of the deep;
     I see thy dark clouds ascend;
     I see thy black forests and floods,
     A horrible waste to my eyes!
     4. `Weeping I walk over rocks,
     Over dens, and thro' valleys of death.
     Why didst thou despise Ahania,
     To cast me from thy bright presence
     Into the World of Loneness?
     5. `I cannot touch his hand,
     Nor weep on his knees, nor hear
     His voice and bow, nor see his eyes
     And joy; nor hear his footsteps, and
     My heart leap at the lovely sound!
     I cannot kiss the place
     Whereon his bright feet have trod;
     But I wander on the rocks
     With hard necessity.
     6. `Where is my golden palace?
     Where my ivory bed?
     Where the joy of my morning hour?
     Where the Sons of Eternity singing,
     7. `To awake bright Urizen, my King,
     To arise to the mountain sport,
     To the bliss of eternal valleys;
     8. `To awake my King in the morn,
     To embrace Ahania's joy
     On the breath of his open bosom,
     From my soft cloud of dew to fall
     In showers of life on his harvests?
     9. `When he gave my happy soul
     To the Sons of Eternal Joy;
     When he took the Daughters of Life
     Into my chambers of love;
     10. `When I found Babes of bliss on my beds,
     And bosoms of milk in my chambers,
     Fill'd with eternal seed ——
     O! eternal births sung round Ahania,
     In interchange sweet of their joys!
     11. `Swell'd with ripeness and fat with fatness,
     Bursting on winds, my odours,
     My ripe figs and rich pomegranates,
     In infant joy at thy feet,
     O Urizen! sported and sang.
     12. `Then thou with thy lap full of seed,
     With thy hand full of generous fire,
     Walkèd forth from the clouds of morning;
     On the virgins of springing joy,
     On the Human soul to cast
     The seed of eternal Science.
     13. `The sweat pourèd down thy temples,
     To Ahania return'd in evening;
     The moisture awoke to birth
     My mother's joys, sleeping in bliss.
     14. `But now alone! over rocks, mountains,
     Cast out from thy lovely bosom!
     Cruel Jealousy, selfish Fear,
     Self- destroying! how can delight
     Renew in these chains of darkness,
     Where bones of beasts are strown
     On the bleak and snowy mountains,
     Where bones from the birth are burièd
     Before they see the light?'