45

and Enion are absorbed, Los and Enitharmon are mature, Luvah and Vala are in suspension, and Urizen with Ahania in abeyance has usurped power. Within this context the feast can be thought of as a celebration of Urizen's mundane authority, and an inversion of the harvest festival of Night the Ninth where the blood is transformed into wine and the 'veget­able forms' into bread; here, jealousy, desolation, antagonism and impotence characterize the 'golden age' of Urizen's temporal harmony:

The Earth spread forth her table wide; the Night,

a silver cup

Fill'd with the wine of anguish, waited at the

golden feast.

But the bright Sun was not as yet; he, filling all

the expanse,

350         Slept as a bird in the blue shell that soon shall burst away.

351         K. I. 347-350)

The Pythagorean universe Urizen will shape is implied by the allusion to the Orphic egg. The mundane boundaries render the communion sterile.

355 They eat the fleshly bread, they drank the nervous wine;

They listen'd to the Elemental Harps & Sphery Song:

They view'd the dancing Hours quick sporting thro' the

sky.

With winged radiance scattering joys thro' the ever changing light.

(K. I. 355-358)

This Arcadian summer must be seen in terms of the winter into which its cycle is drawn:

Not long in harmony they dwell, their life is drawn

away

And wintry woes succeed, successive driven into the Void

Where Enion craves, successive drawn into the golden feast. CK. I. 371-373)

The periodicity of this cycle contrasts the regenerative periodicity of the infinite. The song depicts an inversion of the true principle of sacrifice,

The Orphic egg, the elemental harmony and the music of the spheres provide the Hellenic setting for the song as the generative cycle quickens: