THE MAN'S CALMING: THE MILLS' AGITATION


tinction breaks down even before it is made in the phrase "the Mills of
Urthona" (138:3). This sequence instantly reverses the harmony
associated with "the Man": "Terrible the distress / Of all the Nations of
Earth ground in the Mills of Urthona" (138:2-3). Tharmas reappears
(138:4), as if by reflex to the violence, resuming the "Fierce" aspect
associated with his winnowing (134:2-5) and appropriating his whirlwind
from that context to power the wheels of Dark Urthona's Mills. In turning
his whirlwind loose on the wheels, Tharmas agitates, along with other
elemental forms, the "seas" and the "floods," precisely those forms whose
calmness had been emphasized just a few lines earlier as being expressive
of Los/Urthona's "regenerate power."
 This violent reversal of that prior calming of the waters thus suggests a
perpetuation of the mild/fierce dialectic: as if the "Man" entered to calm
the elements only so Dark Urthona and Tharmas could stir them up again.
The warring elements that subsided following the vision of the Human
Wine are again fiercely agitated-the seas "howl" and "rejoice," while the
floods only "Rejoice." The previously calmed harmonious sea and
floods become harsh and discordant and, along with the other elements,
"Thunders [air] Earthquakes Fires Water," "shake the Abyss" (138:7-8).
Though "Abyss" has occurred in the singular thirty times in Nights II-
VIII (it is absent from Night I), this is the first and only time it occurs in
Night IX. Its singular appearance here seems to disperse and domesticate
the violently agitated elements: "Their dread forms tending the dire mills"
(138:9). "Tending," another gesture of servitude like the previous
"bow[ing]" (137:37) suggests a dissipation of the energy of these "dread
forms" (including seas and floods). As soon as the verb "tending" appears,
the wintry characters "grey hoar frost" and "his pale wife the aged Snow"
(138:9-10) suddenly enter from the wintry landscape that was settling in
before Los/Urthona rose (137:5, 31). Though these characters seem like
quaint personifications, it is significant that they are presented as husband
and wife, a problematic relation in the context of the feast and the recent
reference to Enitharmon as "the wife of Dark Urthona" (137:11); though
they are aged and cold, "they watch over the fires" (138:10) which implies
an even greater containment of the energy that the Wheels had unleashed.
While it is indeterminable whether "They" who "build the Ovens of
Urthona" are only this wintry husband and wife or all the "dread forms"
who are tending the mills, a familiar sight and sound returns at the build-
ing of the Ovens: "Nature in darkness groans" (138:12). "The Man"
returns, divided into "Men...bound to sullen contemplations" (138:13).
The terms that characterize "the works of Dark Urthona" catalogue many
of the poem's most distressing features: "Nature... darkness groans...
bound... night... Restless... beds.., sorrow... crushing Wheels... rise
... write the bitter words / Of Stem Philosophy...the bread of knowl-
edge...tears & groans" (138:11-15). Much of this imagery is associated
with Urizen, the primary character in the poem who writes (Night VI):
the narrator makes only one reference to his own writing in Night V as


The "Mills": resurgence
of violence












The works of Dark Ur-
thona






























The dissipation of vio-
lence at the Mills into the
writing of "Stern
Philosophy" in sorrow-
ful insomnia