62

A span long" (K, II. 92). Once Vala has assumed a human form, she is hidden in "soft gardens & in secret bowers of summer" (K. II. 95) and bears sons and daughters. The combination of the changing water imagery and the changing forms of Vala together symbolize her evolution into the human form out of the "cold & dark obscure." The water fertilizes the land, which is transformed gradually from the place of the worm to the "soft gardens" as Vala grows and changes.

Limited to finite understandings, Luvah sees only the "walls of iron & brass" of the furnace (K. II. 99). After he has fertilized, nourished, and humanized the universe, he is sacrificed in the furnaces in an inverse analogy to the furnace in Daniel. The limits of his memory stretch only from the "cold & dark obscure" to the furnaces and he can perceive only eternal death. Consequently, he rejects the Divine vision: "0 Lamb/Of God clothed in Luvah's garments; little knowest thou/Of death Eternal." Luvah wrongly believes his sacrifice to be beyond Christ's passion:

These were the words of Luvah, patient in afflictions

Reasoning from the loins in the unreal forms of Ulro's

night.

And when Luvah, age after age, was quite melted with

woe,

The fires of Vala faded like a shadow cold & pale,

115 An evanescent shadow; last she fell, a heap of Ashes Beneath the furnaces, a woful heap in living death.

Then were the furnaces unseal'd with spades, &

pickaxes

Roaring let out the fluid: the molten metal ran in

channels

Cut by the plow of ages held in Urizen's strong hand

120 In many a valley, for the Bulls of Luvah drag'd the Plow.

(K. II. 111-120)