The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — The Argument
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell — The Argument
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 path
The just man kept his course along
The Vale of Death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow,
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.
Then the perilous path was planted,
And a river and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth:
Till the villain left the paths of ease
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.
Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility;
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where 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 Energy.
Good is heaven. Evil is hell.
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Complete poem text from the cited public-domain source edition.
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