SYNTACTIC ENACTMENT OF FALSE DAWN


with Urizen who claimed control over the "starry hosts" (12:16) and
attempted to destroy "Man" by identifying him with the "Spectre."
Although the call for the Spider to enlarge itself by consuming marrow,
sinews, and flesh compresses the entire scope of the first half of the Song,
Urizen himself, covertly allegorized in the Song as the Spider, reappears
after the Song diminished in stature (his radiance faded) while Los and
Enitharmon emerge "Enormous."
 The mystifying action occurring at the shift from the musical statement
to the response of the Song analyzes and revises the "bloody" aspect of
Enitharmon's false morning. Earlier, that false morning operated as a
perceptual delusion associated with sexual warfare; now the bloody sky of
the false morning becomes the tool of a very different power struggle. The
point in the text where the Spider "attain[s] a voice" and calls to his "dark
armd hosts" -"Awake O Hosts" (15:6) -signals the explicit entrance into
the Song of named characters from the narrative proper: "The bow string
sang upon the hills! Luvah & Vala ride / Triumphant in the bloody sky. &
the Human form is no more" (15:7-8). As in Urizen's "Victory," the war
seems over in an instant: the prediction, "Man shall be no more," is
replaced in two lines by the assertion, "the Human form is no more"; and
Luvah and Vala, who in the narrative proper were most recently sus-
pended and forsaken in Enitharmon's bloody sky, suddenly now "ride
triumphant" there. The Spider's cry, "Awake O Hosts," thus itself initiates
a false morning: it is enmeshed in an obfuscating multitude of involuted
voices, including at this point the echoing voices of the "Demons of the
Deep" who will close the Song; and at this vocally complex cry, Luvah and
Vala reappear in triumph in the bloody sky, accompanied by the song of
the "bow string," a warlike parody of the melodious strings accompany-
ing the Song at the Feast. The compressed imagery and syntax which
follow the reappearance of Luvah and Vala enact through the text the
perceptual delusion of the false morning:
 The listening Stars heard, & the first beam of the morning started back
 He cried out to his Father, depart! depart! but sudden Siez'd
 And clad in steel. & his Horse proudly neighd; he smelt the battle
 Afar off, Rushing back, reddning with rage the Mighty Father
 Siezd his bright Sheephook studded with gems & gold, he Swung it
 round
 His head shrill sounding in the sky, down rushd the Sun with noise
 Of war.
 (15:9-15)

 Events and characters fuse together at the moment offalse dawn: structur-
 ally, it is impossible to determine whether these events are a response to
 the triumphant appearance ofLuvah and Vala or an analysis of the war that
 seemed to be over in a flash; indeed it is impossible even to determine
 whether the reference to Luvah and Vala is part of the Spider's speech or of
 the Song proper. In addition, every attempt to sort out exactly who these
 oblique figures are and who is doing what to whom runs into unresolvable


The movement from
musical statement to
response: named charac-
ters reappear; warfare
emerges; desolate
landscape
























The female sexual
ground of false morning
is subordinated to male
warfare.