1. The Immortal stood frozen amidst
The vast Rock of Eternity, times
And times, a night of vast durance,
Impatient, stifled, stiffen'd, hard'ned;

2. Till impatience no longer could bear
The hard bondage: rent, rent, the vast Solid,
With a crash from Immense to Immense,

3. Crack'd across into numberless fragments.
The Prophetic wrath, struggling for vent,
Hurls apart, stamping furious to dust,
And crumbling with bursting sobs, heaves
The black marble on high into fragments.

4. Hurl'd apart on all sides as a falling
Rock, the innumerable fragments away
Fell asunder; and horrible Vacuum
Beneath him, and on all sides round,

5. `Falling! falling! Los fell and fell,
Sunk precipitant, heavy, down! down!
Times on times, night on night, day on day --
Truth has bounds, Error none -- falling, falling,
Years on years, and ages on ages;
Still he fell thro' the Void, still a Void
Found for falling, day 1000 and night without end;
For tho' day or night was not, their spaces
Were measur'd by his incessant whirls
In the horrid Vacuity bottomless.

6. The Immortal revolving, indignant,
First in wrath threw his limbs, like the babe
New-born into our world: wrath subsided,
And contemplative thoughts first arose;
Then aloft his head rear'd in the Abyss,
And his downward-borne fall chang'd oblique.


7. Many ages of groans! till there grew
Branchy forms, organizing the Human
Into finite inflexible organs;
8. Till in process from falling he bore
Sidelong on the purple air, wafting
The weak breeze in efforts o'erwearièd:

9. Incessant the falling Mind labour'd,
Organizing itself, till the Vacuum
Became Element, pliant to rise,
Or to fall, or to swim, or to fly,
With ease searching the dire Vacuity.