First he beheld the body of Man, pale. cold; the horrors

of death

Beneath his feet shot thro' him as he stood in the Human

Brain,

And all its golden porches grew pale with his sickening

light,

No more Exulting, for he saw Eternal Death beneath.

15 Pale, he beheld futurity: pale, he beheld the Abyss

Where Enion, blind & age bent, wept in direful hunger

craving.

All rav'ning like the hungry worm & like the silent grave.

Mighty was the draught of Voidness to draw Existence in. (K. II. 11-18)

Light symbolism is significant here. To Urizen, the inversion of the harvest feast is a "bright Feast" from which he leaves like a "star" in the "evening" as a harbinger of darkness. The "body of Man" is "pale" and as Urizen stands on the threshold of Albion's consciousness the "golden porches" dim "pale" with Urizen*s now "sickening light." Night is falling as the "draught of Voidness" draws "Existence" into finitude.

Urizen sees "futurity," or the future process of the cycle of the finite, and pales. At the limit of finitude, the circumference of the circle of destiny, is the figure of Enion "blind & age bent." The "Abyss" of "Eternal Death" is like a vacuum that draws infinite life into itself, and Enion, the power of generation, is seen as "All rav'ning like the hungry worm & like the silent grave." She can only transform life into death. The power of regeneration is lost.

Urizen sets out to build the "Mundane Shell." Like Plato's Demiurge, Urizen is a craftsman:

Luvah & Vala trembling & shrinking beheld the great

Work master

And heard his Word: "Divide, ye bands, influence by

influence.

"Build we a Bower for heaven's darling in the grizly

deep:

25 "Build we the Mundane Shell around the Rock of Albion." (K. II. 22-25)