THARMAS' SPEECH: THE BLACK'S SONG


of Tharmas' voice. While it is possible that Tharmas' voice dissolves in-
sensibly into the narrator's, it is clear that the voice of the tribunal
("Go down..." "Let...") which revels in torture softens to (relatively)
conversational language: "If you are thirsty there is the river go bathe your
parched limbs" (134:28).
 The sequence containing Tharmas' speech ends in a decidedly milder
tone than its fierce beginning (assuming it is indeed still his voice),
directly re-enacting through a speech gesture the mild "humanizing" of
his furiousness when he embraced Enion. The response of the slaves to this
new freedom is a song that attempts to drown the supervening "confu-
sion" while the clear sounds of Urizen's flail and Tharmas' winnowing
wind register loudly. Music usually signals the appearance ofthe feast, and
this is no exception. The surprise is not at all that the "song" which will
merge with the feast is composed by an African Black (since slaves are
being freed) but that the song has the precise verbal texture that it has. The
song begins almost ludicrously with "Aha Aha..."-a verbal gesture
Blake uses only this one time in all his writings. Second, the song compul-
sively repeats the word "Methinks," another exceedingly rare word in
Blake: it occurs otherwise in his earliest writings only, and he never uses it
again after this present context.
 Blake uses these words (with a low frequency probability) to mark this
 song off from the rest of the poem. The effect is one of sudden self-
 conscious reflection on the previous sequence concerning the freeing of
 slaves. It is as if the song's possible inappropriateness (imagine myriads of
 slaves singing these words and the inappropriateness becomes more ap-
 parent)4 calls in question the nature of the freeing that seems to have
 mellowed Tharmas' voice so. This possibility is enhanced because Thar-
 mas' speech is itself a verbal form of his furious winnowing, to which
 Tharmas again returns. Blake leaves the balance delicate in the song:

 Aha Aha how came I here so soon in my sweet native land
 How came I here Methinks I am as I was in my youth
 When in my fathers house I sat & heard his hearing voice
 Methinks I see his flocks & herds & feel my limbs renewed
 And Lo my Brethren in their tents & their little ones around them
 (134:35-135:3)

 The questioning surprise of the Black parallels the questioning at the end
 of Tharmas' speech and emphasizes that the transformation he feels he has
 experienced must be expressed by a comparison-he thinks he is now "as"
 he was in his youth. For his imagery, the African Black not only seems to
 be responding to the message of the very last words of Tharmas, but also
 to be recreating pastoral Beulah-like memories often associated with
 Tharmas, e.g., in 34:40 and 51:30-31. Although the voice of the Black's
 father seems to lie beyond the poem itself, in emphasizing "I sat & heard
 his hearing voice," however, the Black opens the possibility that this
 voice he hears is comprised of Tharmas' closing words, for Tharmas


The problematic verbal
texture of the song of the
African Black








Similes of memory:
markers or transforma-
tions of lethargy:
"sweet," "sat"?