In what strange dreams did Blake see the pale woman of Plate 13 lying on the bed of ocean. Quick moving fishes flash around her body in the dim blue twilight, and a sea snake is coiled about her legs. On the top of the same page the body floating on waves is being torn by a vulture.

Many of the plates are quivering with flames which shoot up in spiral tongues to play about the letters of the writing. Incidentally, the writing used in “America” is more fluent—running into dainty pennons and fluttering streamers of decoration—than any used before.

At the sale of Messrs. Hodgson’s before mentioned, a single loose coloured plate of the frontispiece to “America” (Orc chained by the wrists) sold for £20 10s.

We close “America” regretfully, for a wild enchantment emanates from its pages, and entering into the spectator’s mind makes him realize that indeed “everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.”

[Larger Image]

PAGE FROM “AMERICA: A PROPHECY,” 1793

Printed in blue, from the Print Room copy

In 1794 appeared “Europe, a prophecy.” It has fifteen large plates, but before dwelling on them a word must be said about the prophecy itself. The prelude is the lament of a nameless shadowy female, who rises from out the breast of Orc. She is also daughter to Enitharmon. Her complaint is often musical enough if we could but know what it was all about:

I wrap my turban of thick clouds around my lab’ring head,
And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs,
Yet the red sun and moon,
And all the overflowing stars, rain down prolific pains.