57

The lines that follow Urizen's command (lines 26-65 inclusive) are dense with complex geometrical allusions. First, the "Bands of Heaven" make the instruments necessary for the "Mundane Shell "; the anvil, the loom, the plow, the harrow, the harness, the compasses, the quadrant, the rule and balance, and the furnaces. This is in preparation for the construction of a universe by the application of force to matter. The mutability of time and space of infinite being stands in direct contrast. Second, since "The Man's exteriors are become indefinite" (K, I. 543), the Human Form Divine has devolved. Animals of sublime form tend the furnaces and shape the indefinite into order. Blake's late emendation--"Sublime, distinct, their lineaments divine of human beauty" (K. II. 34)--indicates the transposition of the Human Form Divine from the infinite to the finite. Sublime art preserves the "lineaments" of the Human Form Divine.

It is at this point that the sun and moon come into existence. Significantly, at the feast of Los and Enitharmon "the bright Sun was not as yet" (K. I. 349). So, in the tradition of Adam Kadman, the universe 'flows out* of Albion:

Albion gave his loud death groan. The Atlantic

Mountains trembled

. Aloft the Moon fled with a cry: the Sun with streams

of blood.

From Albion's Loins fled all Peoples and Nations of

this Earth,

Fled with the noise of Slaughter, & the stars of

heaven fled.

(K. II. 41-44)

Albion's emanation, Jerusalem, falls too:

45          Jerusalem came down in a dire ruin over all the

46          Earth,

She fell cold from Lambeth's Vales in groans dewy death--