William Blake

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell William Blake

RINTRAH roars and shakes his fires in the burden'd air, Hungry clouds swag on the deep. Once meek, and in a perilous pathThe just man kept his course alongThe Vale of Death. Roses are planted where thorns grow, And on the barren heathSing the honey bees. Then the perilous path was planted, And a river and a springOn every cliff and tomb; And on the bleached bonesRed clay brought forth: Till the villain left the paths of easeTo walk in perilous paths, and driveThe just man into barren climes. Now the sneaking serpent walksIn mild humility; And the just man rages in the wildsWhere lions roam. Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burden'd air, Hungry clouds swag on the deep. As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent, the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the angel sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, and the return of Adam into Paradise.-See Isaiah xxxiv. and xxxv. chap. Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from E