59

with an incomplete thought reinforcing the idea that without Jerusalem's visionary whole, the energies collapse. The thought reads:

Binding Jerusalem's Children in the dungeons of Babylon;

They play before the Armies, before the hounds of

Nimrod,

65 While the Prince of Light on Salisbury plain among the Druid Stones.

(K. II. 63-65)

As a component energy, Urizen does not have sufficient potency to order the

finite. He needs Luvah and Vala's energies and he sacrifices them. This

provides the energies of motion for Urizen's "Mundane Shell":

Luvah was cast into the Furnaces of affliction

& sealed,

___________________________________________

NOTE. Stevenson and Erdman comment that lines 249-276 (K. II. 39-65) are added. The passage deals with Albion's disintegration, Jerusalem's fall, Reuben and Levi (the sons of Albion), and the daughters of Albion. It ends with the children of Jerusalem in the dungeons and the Prince of Light "among the Druid Stones." This passage can be read as depicting the disorder before Urizen's order. It relates to an important idea, which occurs in Night the Eighth. Briefly, the Sanhedrin is called by Urizen to judge Christ, and Babylon is in its midst. She is a "False Feminine Counterpart, of Lovely Delusive Beauty/Dividing & Uniting at will in the Cruelties of Holiness" (K. VIII. 278-279) in the midst of "Twelve rocky unshap'd forms, terrific forms of torture & woe" (K. VIII. 276). The "Twelve rocky" forms are the "Synagogue of Satan" (K. VIII. 272) and have been called together by Urizen "To judge the Lamb of God to Death" (K. VIII. 273). It is possible that the incomplete thought of Night the Second moves too quickly, so to speak, to the symbol of the feminine energies with Urizen around the "Druid Stones."

Certainly, the above view of these lines is conjecture, for they remain incomplete. The analogy between the stones and the relation between masculine and feminine energies is similar to that expressed in Night the Eighth. If Blake found himself 'too far ahead', it is reasonable to conjecture that he simply abandoned the thought and the lines. On the other hand, Stevenson and Erdman's view that a line is missing is equally possible, for if one examines the lines immediately before the added passage--"In human forms distinct they stood round Urizen, prince of Light, /Petrifying all the Human Imagination into rock & sand" (K. II. 37-38)--a similar use of metaphor is found. Urizen, "prince of Light," is among "rock & sand." A development of this metaphor into Urizen "Prince of Light on Salisbury plain among the Druid Stones" is reasonable.