Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion

by William Blake, Morton D. Paley (Editor), David Bindman (Editor)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Romanticism, Fiction, 19th Century, Literature, Religion

302 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1808

About the author

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts.

Blake's prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the language". His visual artistry has led one modern critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced." Although he only once travelled any further than a day's walk outside London over the course of his life, his creative vision engendered a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced 'imagination' as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".

Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical and mystical currents that underlie his work. His work has been characterized as part of the Romantic movement, or even "Pre-Romantic", for its largely having appeared in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the established Church, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Emanuel Swedenborg.

Despite these known influences, the originality and singularity of Blake's work make it difficult to classify. One 19th century scholar characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary", "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors."

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just noticed I originally rated this 3 stars when I finished it this morning and gave it the whole ‘RTC’ treatment. Blame my nonfunctional eyes and post-stroke fingers for that error! Sheeesh…

OK, this is Blake’s self-proclaimed masterpiece and it is definitely a work of poetic fantasy on a truly epic scale. The illustrations are beautiful. The verse is powerful and almost transcendent.

Yes, it is confusing, with its multi-gendered characters who are also places who are also gods who are also abstract concepts, but if you give it the attention it needs it does hold together… just about.

I honestly don’t think Blake was entirely present in this world, living as much (if not more) in a world of his own creation. This is probably true of many great creators, though. In their case, the usually pejorative term ‘they’re not all there’ is probably literally true.

Whatever you may think of this work and this man, it’s undeniable that it gave us one of our best hymns; one that even I, a lifelong atheist and non-patriot, finds stirring:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic mills
Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spears o'clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire
I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land…

[Joe Kraus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, I am not about to “review” William Blake. Reading his work is an experience, and you’re in the mood to “get it” or not. You don’t, in the 21st century, evaluate it.

Still it is fair, I think, to try to evaluate this edition of his work.

When I was reading Alan Moore’s remarkable novel Jerusalem a few weeks ago, I wanted to get a sense of Blake’s Jerusalem. I pulled my trusty Penguin Collected Blake off the shelf and started reading, but then I realized I was missing a big part of the experience. Moore may have written a novel entirely in text, but it’s one that turns on the visual fine art he describes. And, of course, Moore has spent most of his career in graphic novels. So, I wanted to see the illustrations Blake prepared for his own work.

That turned out to be tougher than I expected. I assumed there’d be an easily accessible on-line edition, but I couldn’t find one – nor could the college reference librarian I consulted. (There are some great digitized editions on-line at the New York Public Library, but not for Jerusalem.)

Instead, we found this edition from Princeton University Press and, expensive as it is, we ordered it for the library.

It’s a beautiful book, and it’s possible to see all 100 plates of the poem back-to-back. Still…

I believe the originals are a good bit larger than the reproduction. And, at least in my imagination, they’re brighter than the pastels of this. Plus, as a result of the sizing, it’s hard to read the words of the text. Sure they’re typed out at the end of this, but I had that in my Penguin.

So, while this may be the best edition available, it still leaves a lot to be desired. Somehow, it seems, this masterwork of English literature remains inaccessible.

All that said, there are better places to start reading Blake. This one is late-stage stuff. It’s hard to make sense of it since its mythology is already developed. I mean who exactly are Los and Albion, and what do they have to with the dismemberment of Jerusalem – who is himself simultaneously a character, a symbol, and a city as well as a representation of 18th Century London?

And the language and tone is right out of the Book of Revelations with bizarre pronouncements and everything functioning at a mythological, symbolic level more than a literal one.

There are some great lines, of course. This is Blake after all. A couple I love are, “[The sons of Albion are] by Abstraction opposed to the Visions of Imagination,” and “As God is love: every kindness to another is a little Death.”

I don’t pretend to understand it, and I missed being able to see the large and bright illustrations I imagine Blake must have wanted to accompany them, but there is nevertheless occasional magic in the glimpse we get.

[Randy Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My husband bought me an exquisite copy of this monumental Blake poem, the most powerful yet inscrutable of his works. I spent several months slowly reading and examining each of the one hundred plates. There is such a glorious tension between the art work, so rich and deep, bursting with energy, sometimes gruesome, often transcendently beautiful on the one hand and the prose which has a different kind of power and imagination despite being almost incoherent. That the poetry tells a personally resonant story to Blake can’t be doubted but he doesn’t care that his reader is ill-equipped to interpret his meaning.

The tension between the visual and written works accesses deeply primal chords of resonance within me. I am not put off by my lack of understanding but instead pulled into its mesmerizing mystery. I feel as I read and react to his vision I am pulled towards a glowing orb found in a mythic underworld. This to me is the epitome of a mystical experience. If I had to convey to someone in words how moved and altered I am by this work, I would fail. I would only hope that my visible excitement would communicate to someone why this work is so meaningful.

[Marc Lamot]

I guess I'm not the only one having trouble with this book. It clearly belongs to Blake’s mature period (1804), but this makes it considerably more hermetic than his other work, which is already very difficult to access. What is striking is the epic character of this longer book, with a complete doctrine of salvation and his own vision of the universe in the background. Formally there is the very pathetic style, with constant exclamations and almost continuous verbal fireworks, often with an endless list of geographical and mythical names, lots of metaphors and symbolism. Blake revisits a number of themes from his early work; thus Urizen (the enforcer of order and reason) and Los emerge again. Even more than before, Albion, the mythical giant of Great Britain, is present, and on a superficial reading this seems like a patriotic writing (cf. the much-quoted lines “And did those feet in ancient time/Walk upon England's mountains green”). Nothing could be further from the truth, as John Higgs (Blake versus the World) taught me. The fervent praise of Christianity (not that of the churches, of course) and the outbursts against the Enlightened deists are other ingredients. So there's a lot of meat on the bone. Best to read with extensive, expert commentary.

[Daniel Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red run the streams of Albion: Thames is drunk with blood

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

It may be that I'm just dense, but I found much of this extremely difficult. I had to re-read a LOT, and even then some passages were just too specific to the time and place.
However, it was worth it, and, as Blake paints his picture of the universe and the placement of human imagination and society within it, I found myself weeping at points. The passion with which Blake's near-insane message of universal oneness is drawn out gives some of the most beautiful metaphors and descriptions of his that I've read yet.

Additionally, the scope feels so vast that he seems to write about subjects that wouldn't be discussed seriously until a century after his death.
I read this at the same time as a book on Einstein's theories, and I couldn't help but feel that Blake predicted the curvature of spacetime (even going so far as to say Newton doesn't go far enough, and that Euclidean geometry has too narrow a scope; hell, even the "minute particulars" he refers to could be compared to spacetime geodesics!)

So my advice is this: Read it, even if it seems overwhelming. Point of fact, it IS overwhelming. After all, how could anything with a scope as grand as this be anything but? However, you are bound to see your worldview painted somewhere in this poem, and instructions for connecting that worldview to the worldviews of others. It may not make sense right away, but you're bound to walk away with something to think about.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Step ten on Benjamin McEvoy's William Blake reading path is the destination itself. Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804–1820) is Blake's longest single work — one hundred etched and illuminated plates, his most ambitious illuminated book, and by every account the single most difficult thing he ever wrote. I want to say at the outset what surprised me most about reading it: it was not a slog. It was the opposite. I felt compelled to read it straight through, beginning to end, before I went back to consult any guide to fully understand what I had just experienced. That has never happened to me with a famously difficult book before.

It made me think, more than once, of James Joyce's Ulysses — a comparison I did not expect to be making about an illuminated prophetic poem from 1820. Both are towering, formally radical works that completely reorganize how a long narrative can move through time. Both demand outside guidance to fully parse. I used a reader's guide and a Great Courses series to get through Ulysses, leaning on secondary material continuously, almost paragraph by paragraph, just to stay oriented. And I hated the experience. Ulysses never once, for me, generated the kind of forward pull that makes you want to keep turning pages; it felt like solving a puzzle someone else had designed to be unsolvable without a key. Jerusalem is, if anything, stranger and more difficult in its raw construction — but it was beautiful and engrossing from the very first plate, in a way Ulysses never was for me. Maybe I have grown as a reader. Maybe the nine books that preceded this one on McEvoy's path did the work of building a vocabulary and a sensibility I simply didn't have when I first opened Ulysses. Whatever the explanation, the difference in experience was total.

Even Harold Bloom, the most confident and systematizing of Blake's major critics, throws up his hands at the prospect of summarizing this poem. In Blake's Apocalypse, his full-length study of Blake's prophetic books, Bloom writes: "Jerusalem is twice as long as its prelude, Milton, and very much more difficult, so much so that I will not give a full summary of it." If Bloom won't attempt it, I certainly won't try to out-do him here. What I can offer instead is a sense of the poem's shape, its central concerns, and why it captivated me as completely as it did.

Jerusalem tells, in the loosest possible sense of "tells," the story of the fall and eventual redemption of Albion — Blake's embodiment of universal humanity, and simultaneously the literal land of Britain. Albion banishes his own Emanation, Jerusalem, and his vision of the divine, Jesus; this rupture blights nature, culture, and Albion's inner life all at once. Los, Blake's tireless embodiment of poetic and prophetic imagination, labors throughout the poem's four chapters to restore Albion to wholeness, battling his own Spectre, building the visionary city of Golgonooza, and resisting the cold abstractions of Urizen, Bacon, and Newton. The poem is dedicated, in its four parts, to four different audiences — "To the Public," "To the Jews," "To the Deists," "To the Christians" — as if Blake is trying to reach every possible reader by a different door, because no single door will get everyone through.

What makes the poem so disorienting on a first read, and so exhilarating once you surrender to it, is Blake's complete abandonment of linear time. Characters are simultaneously persons and places — Jerusalem is a woman and a city; Albion is a man and the whole of Britain. The narrative moves backward and forward without warning, collapsing past, present, and future into single visionary moments. Blake states this method outright, and the line is one of the most quietly astonishing claims in the whole poem:

I see the Past, Present, and Future existing all at once
Before me; O Divine Spirit! sustain me on thy wings,
That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose.

This is not narrative carelessness. It is a deliberate rejection of the idea that meaning unfolds sequentially. Blake wants the whole of human history visible at once, the way it might appear to an eternal mind rather than a mortal one, and he builds the poem's strange, looping structure to try to give the reader a taste of that simultaneity.

The poem's most famous statement of artistic purpose comes early, and it has become something of a personal credo for me as a creative writer in my own much smaller way:

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.
I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

And its deepest ethical claim — the one I find myself returning to most as a mental health clinician, of all things — is the doctrine of the Minute Particulars:

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite & flatterer.

Blake's insistence that love and goodness only exist in specific, individual acts toward specific, individual people — never in abstract policy or general sentiment — is a genuinely radical ethical claim, and one I think about often in clinical work, where "general good" so easily becomes an excuse to avoid the harder, more particular work of actually helping the person in front of you.
The poem closes, after a hundred plates of struggle, in genuine apocalyptic release — not destruction, but awakening. Albion rises. The Four Zoas are reunited. And the whole of creation, animal and human alike, is swept into the renewed and forgiven Divine Body:

And I heard Jehovah speak
Terrific from his Holy Place, & saw the Words of the Mutual Covenant Divine
On Chariots of gold & jewels, with Living Creatures starry & flaming
With every Color, Lion, Tyger, Horse, Elephant, Eagle Dove, Fly, Worm,
And the all wondrous Serpent clothed in gems & rich array, Humanize
In the Forgiveness of Sins according to thy Covenant.

I cannot pretend I understood all of this on first contact. I went, gladly and without embarrassment, to Northrop Frye's Fearful Symmetry and Harold Bloom's The Visionary Company and Blake's Apocalypse, along with several supplementary essays and resources on the poem's structure and symbolism. Going back to these guides after finishing the poem, rather than before or during, felt right: I wanted my first encounter with Jerusalem to be mine, unmediated, before I let scholars tell me what I had seen.

I also have to make a separate case for the art, because Jerusalem represents the absolute summit of Blake's work as a visual artist, not just a poet. The full-page designs are extraordinary, and I want to highlight a few that stayed with me most.


Plate 1, Frontispiece, Los Entering a Gothic Arch

The frontispiece sets the tone immediately: Los, lantern in hand, stepping through a glowing doorway into darkness, beginning his long labor.


Plate 25, Albion and his Tormentors

One of the most haunting images in the entire illuminated canon: Albion crucified, surrounded by the very forces — Vala, Hand, Hyle — that have brought about his fall.


Plate 84, London led by a Child

A blind, ancient figure of London being led through the ruined city by a small child — devastating in its simplicity, and one of the plates that stayed with me longest after I closed the book.


Plate 99, Jehovah embraces Jerusalem. And yes, if you think that it looks like the old man is grabbing her butt, that is exactly what is happening!

The penultimate plate, and the visual climax of the entire poem: total reunion, total forgiveness, rendered in gold and flame.


Plate 100

The final image of the poem, and of the entire ten-book journey through Blake's illuminated works: Los, Enitharmon, and Albion's redeemed sons, walking forward into the furnaces of eternity.

These are only a handful of the hundred plates, but they give some sense of the scale and ambition involved. No other poet I have ever read has built a visual cosmology to match his verbal one this completely. Reading Jerusalem without looking closely at the art is reading half the book.

This is the end of the journey. Ten books, beginning with the lyric clarity of Songs of Innocence and of Experience and ending here, in the most demanding and most beautiful thing Blake ever made. I went in not knowing what to expect from a writer most people know only through "Tyger Tyger" and a hymn sung at English football matches. I come out of it convinced he is one of the strangest and most genuinely visionary artists English literature has ever produced — a madman, a mystic, a brilliant and infuriating philosopher I disagree with constantly and cannot stop reading.


Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)
The Book of Thel (1789)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)
Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793)
America: A Prophecy (1793)
Europe: A Prophecy (1794)
The Song of Los (1795)
The Book of Urizen (1794)
Milton: A Poem in Two Books (1804–1811)
Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804–1820)



[Image: Title Page on Plate 2]

Citations:
Blake, W. (2013). Jerusalem. In The complete illuminated books of William Blake (eBook). e-artnow. https://sackett.net/blake-illuminated... (Original work published 1820).
Blake, W. (2012). Jerusalem. In Delphi complete works of William Blake (eBook). Delphi Classics. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00... (Original work published 1820).
Bloom, H. (1963). Blake's apocalypse: A study in poetic argument. Doubleday.
Bloom, H. (1961). The visionary company: A reading of English romantic poetry. Doubleday.
Frye, N. (1947). Fearful symmetry: A study of William Blake. Princeton University Press.

Title: Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion
Author(s): William Blake (1757–1827)
Years: 1804–1820
Genre: Fiction — Epic Poem, Prophetic Book
Date(s) read: 5/24/26–5/29/26
Book 107 in 2026

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found a lovely folio size copy of Blake's Jerusalem from 1906 in the 2nd hand bookshop on Charring Cross road. It was beautiful type and paper and something I'd been meaning to read for awhile. I'd read Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the Songs of innocence and experience years ago. Despite having read the introduction the poems made Very Little Sense. I think I will have to buy myself an illustrated version and see if that helps. But even without much sense it was still beautiful and there were lovely lines that really jumped out at me. I think I will have to buy the illustrated version and see if that helps it make more sense. But even though I was confussed I still really liked it and enjoyed the themes, which I think were industrialisation, god, mis-interpretation of Christianity and some trouble between the sexes. But I could be wrong on that.

[John Yelverton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pretty compelling poem about attempting to spread the word of God throughout all of England, and making it a new Jerusalem.

[w gall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jerusalem by William Blake was for me impossible to follow but nevertheless it kept my interest. William Blake meant something by it, and Blake scholars and careful readers probably have a loose grasp of what that might be, Mystical characters in almost continual strife, pursuing happiness and eternal life, and the repugnance of moral laws as opposed to the forgiveness of others' sins, leading to the goal, Jerusalem- these seem to me to be the major themes. Does this amount to a loose grasp of Blake's purpose on my part? If he is asserting that the Old Testament and the New Testament are opposed, I disagree with him, though I can see how someone could conclude that. That he has a good grasp of the Holy Scriptures is clear, and prophets are mentioned among the characters, so I would not say that his adherence to his own form of Marcion antinomianism can be proved conclusively from the book. In any case, four stars it is, even though I could not follow. I credit this to Blake's marvelous facility with the English language.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to this on librivox, read by Nick Duncan, and (no joke) Nick absolutely kept me present through almost the entire thing. I drifted on occasion but his reading was outstanding and seemed to do this difficult text its absolute due. I would've struggled reading it and might not have finished.

I need to read the guide to the writings of Blake that I have before I listen a second time, though. I'm hoping that will clear up some of the most difficult passages and reveal the 'something' that always seemed to be holding back. My understanding seemed to crest and trough at various times. I'd be feeling like things were becoming clearer and I could almost see Blake's intent but then the image would be lost in obscurity (I'm really curious to know what an 'hermaphroditic winepress' is an allusion to).

I look forward a second go. Rest assured I'll listen to Nick again!

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not a poetry buff. I enjoy it, and I appreciate it, but it is not my passion.

With that being said, this was a rough one for me. I like Blake a lot, but I struggled getting through this. it was odd, though: even though I found it difficult to follow and hard to keep reading, it kept me coming back.

If you think you'd like reading something that's a cross between the old testament and Revelation, written in King James, then you would probably really like this book.

[Adam Shenouda · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of blake’s best works (i say this about all his works) im kicking myself for not having read this while working on my thesis but oh well there’s always my masters. i’m gonna need to reread it once i get my hands on s. foster damon’s dictionary..

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yet another installment of Blake's universe- plus showing influence of German contemporaries

[Mark Ferrara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blake at his most magnificent (and inscrutable)! A beautiful reproduction of the plates with transcriptions.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I give this 4 stars...This definitely needs a few more readings

[Andy Febrico Bintoro · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the longest text and illustrations by the author. The content was full of mysticism as usual.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just wanna know what drugs he took before writing this.

[M. Bobby Kapur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing

The story of life, God. True bible as dictated by spirit itself. Please read again and again with an open mind. Highly recommend.

[Sense of History]

Perhaps the most epic ànd hermetic of William Blake's work. See the review in my general account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Wiley June · Rating 2 out of 5]

interesting. perhaps 3 stars but is a little too Silmarillion coded

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unnecessarily difficult.

[Tommy Milutin · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Blake's "Book of Job" I determined to delve deeper into some of his other works. "Jerusalem" (free online as a part of Poetry's comprehensive archives) is a poem that is progressive in its admittance of England's total lack of proximity to or embodiment of "those feet in ancient time"—additionally, Blake's homeland is described as "clouded," characterized by "Satanic Mills" where the divine purity and grace of the face of Christ had never before advanced its gaze. Or, rather, where it had never before been reciprocated in its attentions. The work is one of action and revolt, both radical and enthused, in hopes of creating a society/nation in the image of Blake's savior. "Mental Fight" is compared to instruments of war through the symbols of bow, arrows, chariot and sword—suggesting that revolution may manifest in intellectual epiphany, not solely in the material taking-up of arms. England's "green and pleasant land," as described in the last line, is one that is illusory. Blake calls for intention in the fostering of truth and for a vigilance in de-constructing what industry and law have upheld.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found a lovely folio size copy of Blake's Jerusalem from 1906 in the 2nd hand bookshop on Charring Cross road. It was beautiful type and paper and something I'd been meaning to read for awhile. I'd read Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the Songs of innocence and experience years ago. Despite having read the introduction the poems made Very Little Sense. I think I will have to buy myself an illustrated version and see if that helps. But even without much sense it was still beautiful and there were lovely lines that really jumped out at me. I think I will have to buy the illustrated version and see if that helps it make more sense. But even though I was confussed I still really liked it and enjoyed the themes, which I think were industrialisation, god, mis-interpretation of Christianity and some trouble between the sexes. But I could be wrong on that.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like all editions in this series, this edition provides a beautiful full color representation of one copy of the work represented in this volume (with some smaller reproductions of other copies in an appendix). Blake's work is accompanied by useful commentary and annotations.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's blake--what else do you need?

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

Be vigilant!! Tri-gendered chariots surround us all!

[Prisoner 071053 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't imagine I understood half of it, but it's glorious verse.

[mytwocents]

Will have to come back to this with the Oxford Companion