Earth's Answer
1Earth rais'd up her head
From the darkness dread & drear.
Her h'ght fled,
Stony dread !
And her locks cover'd with grey despair.
6'Prison'd on wat'ry shore,
Starry Jealousy does keep my den : Cold and hoar,
Weeping o'er
I hear the father of the ancient men.
11'Selfish father of men!
Cruel, jealous, selfish fear!
'The Earth's Answer' (MS. Book) first word deleted. Engraved on a single plate from what is obviously the original draft in the MS. Book (p. 111 reversed). Cp. the lines immediately preceding this poem in the MS Book, beginning: —
'Why art thou silent & invisible,
Father of Jealousy?'
Cp. also the final stanza oi Ahania {engraved 1795): —
'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 buried
Before they see the light?'
3 Her . . . fled] Blake's successive changes of this line are : —
Her eyes fled
orbs dead
light fled (pencil).
4 Stony dread !] Punctuation as in MS. Book and engraved Songs ; (Stony dread !) DGR ; Stony, dread, WMR, EY, WBY. 6 Prison'd . . . shore] Prisoned on this watery shore Swinb. 7 my den :] Punctuation as in Wilk., Shep.; so also in Swinb. Essay, p. 118; other edd. read . . . my den Cold and hoar; 10 father of the] del. in MS. Bk. and replaced by some illegible word erased. 11-15 MS. Book cancelled. The original rime-arrangement abaab breaks down in this and the next stanza. 11 Selfish] Cruel MS. Book 1st rdg. del. 12 selfish] weeping MS. Book 1st rdg. del.
