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(Milton, f. 24, ll. 1–41.)
BUT the Wine-press of Los is eastward of Golgonooza, before the Seat 1 | |
| Of Satan: Luvah laid the foundation, and Urizen finish’d it in howling woe. | |
| How red the Sons and Daughters of Luvah! here they tread the grapes, | |
| Laughing and shouting, drunk with odours; many fall, o’er-wearièd; | |
| Drown’d in the wine is many a youth and maiden: those around | 5 |
| Lay them on skins of tigers and of the spotted leopard and the wild ass, | |
| Till they revive, or bury them in cool grots, making lamentation. | |
| |
| This Wine-press is call’d War on Earth: it is the Printing-Press | |
| Of Los; and here he lays his words in order above the mortal brain, | |
| As cogs are form’d in a wheel to turn the cogs of the adverse wheel. | 10 |
| |
| Timbrels and violins sport round the Wine-presses; the little Seed, | |
| The sportive Root, the Earth-worm, the Gold-beetle, the wise Emmet | |
| Dance round the Wine-presses of Luvah; the Centipede is there, | |
| The Ground-spider with many eyes; the Mole clothèd in velvet, | |
| The ambitious Spider in his sullen web, the lucky Golden-spinner, | 15 |
| The Earwig arm’d, the tender Maggot, emblem of immortality, | |
| The Flea, Louse, Bug, the Tape-worm; all the Armies of Disease, | |
| Visible or invisible to the slothful, Vegetating Man; | |
| The slow Slug, the Grasshopper, that sings and laughs and drinks— | |
| Winter comes: he folds his slender bones without a murmur. | 20 |
| |
| The cruel Scorpion is there, the Gnat, Wasp, Hornet, and the Honey-bee, | |
| The Toad and venomous Newt, the Serpent cloth’d in gems and gold: | |
| They throw off their gorgeous raiment: they rejoice with loud jubilee, | |
| Around the Wine-presses of Luvah, naked and drunk with wine. | |
| |
| There is the Nettle that stings with soft down, and there | 25 |
| The indignant Thistle, whose bitterness is bred in his milk, | |
| Who feeds on contempt of his neighbour; there all the idle Weeds, | |
| That creep around the obscure places, show their various limbs | |
| Naked in all their beauty, dancing round the Wine-presses. | |
| |
| But in the Wine-presses the Human grapes sing not nor dance! | 30 |
| They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming, | |
| In chains of iron and in dungeons, circled with ceaseless fires, | |
| In pits and dens and shades of death, in shapes of torment and woe— | |
| The plates, and screws, and racks, and saws, and cords, and fires and cisterns, | |
| The cruel joys of Luvah’s Daughters, lacerating with knives | 35 |
| And whips their Victims, and the deadly sport of Luvah’s Sons. | |
| |
| They dance around the dying, and they drink the howl and groan; | |
| They catch the shrieks in cups of gold, they hand them to one another: | |
| These are the sports of love, and these the sweet delights of amorous play, | |
| Tears of the grape, the death-sweat of the cluster, the last sigh | 40 |
| Of the mild youth who listens to the luring songs of Luvah. | |
