The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
THE ARGUMENT
RINTRAH roars and shakes his
fires in the burdenM 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;
5
THE MARRIAGE OF
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 Uons roam.
Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in
the burdened 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 Unen
clothes folded up. Now is the domin-
ion of Edom, and the return of Adam
into Paradise. — See Isaiah xxxiv. and
XXXV. chap.
6
HEAVEN AND HELL
Without contraries is no progres-
sion. Attraction and repulsion, rea-
son 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.
THE MARRIAGE OF
THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL
All Bibles or sacred codes have been
the cause of the following errors : —
1. That man has two real existing
principles, viz., a Body and a Soul.
2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone
from the Body ; and that Reason, called
Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment man in
Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following contraries to
these are true : —
1 . Man has no Body distinct from his
Soul. For that called Body is a por-
tion of Soul discerned by the five senses,
the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2 . Energy is the only life , and is from
the Body; and Reason is the bound
or outward circumference of Energy.
8
HEAVEN AND HELL
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
Those who restrain desire, do so
because theirs is weak enough to be
restrained; and the restrainer or
reason usurps its place and governs
the unwilling.
And being restrained, it by degrees
becomes passive, till it is only the
shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in
Paradise Lost, and the Governor or
Reason is called Messiah.
And the original Archangel or pos-
sessor of the command of the heavenly
host is called the Devil, or Satan, and
his children are called Sin and Death.
But in the book of Job, Milton's
Messiah is called Satan.
For this history has been adopted by
both parties.
It indeed appeared to Reason as if
9
THE MARRIAGE OF
desire was cast out, but the Devil's
account is, that the Messiah fell, and
formed a heaven of what he stole from
the abyss.
This is shown in the Gospel, where
he prays to the Father to send the
Comforter or desire that Reason may
have ideas to build on, the Jehovah
of the Bible being no other than he
who dwells in flaming fire. Know
that after Christ's death he became
Jehovah.
But in Milton, the Father is Destiny,
the Son a ratio of the five senses, and
the Holy Ghost vacuum !
Note. — The reason Milton wrote
in fetters when he wrote of Angels
and God, and at Uberty when of
Devils and Hell, is because he was
a true poet, and of the Devil's party
without knowing it.
10
HEAVEN AND HELL
A MEMORABLE FANCY
As I was walking among the fires
of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments
of Genius, which to Angels look like
torment and insanity, I collected some
of their proverbs, thinking that as the
sayings used in a nation mark its
character, so the proverbs of Hell show
the nature of infernal wisdom better
than any description of buildings or
garments.
When I came home, on
About this poem
"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is a visionary and philosophical work by the English poet and artist William Blake. Written in the late 18th century, it's a complex and symbolic exploration of the nature of good and evil, reason and imagination. In the work, Blake presents a series of paradoxical statements and proverbs that challenge conventional notions of morality and dualistic thinking. He argues for the integration of opposites, suggesting that both the angelic and the demonic aspects are necessary for a complete understanding of existence. Overall, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is a distinctive piece in Blake's body of work, showcasing his unique blend of poetry, prose, and visual art to convey his unconventional and visionary ideas. more »
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified by acronimous on November 12, 2023
- 4:28 min read
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Quick analysis:
Scheme | abC x x d e x f xgh I xxfxx xj xx k bC axexkklmx N aoxx xpqlj n I p kr gs xxs kf tt auax lxj N x ejuxg fvw kuv xjmd aq xf x I xmlx bvovjexv jmh xxixjx N j ryxlvxewuy x |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 4,010 |
Words | 889 |
Stanzas | 46 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 5, 2, 2, 1, 2, 9, 1, 4, 5, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 4, 3, 1, 1, 5, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2, 1, 1, 4, 8, 3, 6, 1, 1, 10, 1 |
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