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Although they pose some difficult textual problems the opening lines of Night the First depict the complementary, pre-lapsarian roles of Albion's masculine and feminine energies; then, the fall proper occurs. The feminine role is depicted first:

[This is the Song of Eno .... Vala del.]

The Song of the Aged Mother which shook the heavens

with wrath,

[And thus beginneth the Book of Vala, which whosoever

reads

If with his intellect he comprehend del.]

Hearing the march of long resounding, strong heroic

Verse

Marshall'd in order for the day of Intellectual

Battle.

The heavens [shall del.] quake, the earth [shall del.]

was moved & shudder'd, & the mountains

With all their woods, the streams & valleys wail'd in

dismal fear.

(K. I. 1-8)

Though the final form of these lines remains a problem, it is clear that the song is a song of the feminine energies. The poem is the song of Eno in the sense that Eno "took a Moment of Time/And drew it out to [twenty years del.] seven thousand years with much care & affliction" (K. I. 222-223). Eno, in this reading is the immediate source of the time/space continuum of the finite, and therefore the poem is her song. It is also the song of Vala, in that her allegorical function gives her a central narrative significance. Keynes gives the name "Enitharmon" as a variant (K. Notes, p. 899) and it is her song in the sense that the stated theme concerns Los, and as Los' Emanation, her intuitive energies provide access to the truth.

Blake seems to have settled on the "Aged Mother" as the singer and associates her with the collective feminine energies in the infinite. The adjective "Aged" seems to indicate the 'time ridden' voice of the experience of the finite. Thus, the song can be seen as the tale of