'As we went along
Wild flowers I gathered, and he show'd me each eternal flower.
He laughed aloud to see them whimper because they were pluck'd,
Then hover'd round me like a cloud of incense. When I came
Into my parlour and sat down and took my pen to write,
My fairy sat upon the table and dictated Europe.'
The First Book of Urizen (1794) is a myth, shadowed in dark symbols, of the creation of mortal life and its severing from eternity; the birth of Time out of the void and 'self-contemplating shadow' of unimaginative Reason; the creation of the senses, each a limiting of eternity, and the closing of the tent of heavenly knowledge, so that Time and the creatures of Time behold eternity no more. We see the birth of Pity and of Desire, woman the shadow and desire the child of man. Reason despairs as it realises that life lives upon death, and the cold pity of its despair forms into a chill shadow, which follows it like a spider's web, and freezes into the net of religion, or the restraint of the activities. Under this net the senses shrink inwards, and that creation which is 'the
