60

And Vala fed in cruel delight the furnaces with

fire.

Stern Urizen beheld, urg'd by necessity to keep

75 The evil day afar, & if perchance with iron

power

He might avert his own despair; in woe & fear he

saw

Vala incircle round the furnaces where Luvah was

clos'd.

In joy she heard his howlings & forgot he was her

Luvah,

With whom she walk'd in bliss in times of innocence

& youth.

(K. II. 72-79)

The point that there is a process greater than any individual Zoa is emphasized again. Like Zeus in Prometheus Unbound, Urizen is subject to destiny:"Stern Urizen beheld, urg'd by necessity to keep/The evil day afar." The "evil day, "predicted by the elementals in their song at the feast of Los and Enitharmon, is the day when Luvah, his energies 'compressed' into Ore, bursts from Enitharmon's womb and is chained, like Prometheus. At this point in the cycle of the first universe, however, Luvah's energies are sacrificed to melt the "ore" gathered by Urizen¹s machinery:

Rattling, the adamantine chains & hooks heave up

the ore,

In mountainous masses plung'd in furnaces, & they

shut and seal'd

The furnaces a time & times; all the while blew

the North

His cloudy bellows, & the South & East & dismal

West.

70 And all the while the plow of iron cut the dreadful

furrows

In Ulro, beneath Beulah, where the dead wail Night

& Day.

(K. II. 66-71)

In a state of ecstasy Vala feeds "in cruel delight the furnaces with fire." As the formative principle to the impulse of Luvah, she must receive his impulse and give it shape and form. Since Luvah