Petrific

The aggregated Soyle Death with his Mace petrific, cold and dry, As with a Trident smote, and fix't as firm As DELOS floating once; the rest his look Bound with GORGONIAN rigor not to move, And with ASPHALTIC slime; broad as the Gate, Deep to the Roots of Hell the gather'd beach They fasten'd, and the Mole immense wraught on Over the foaming deep high Archt, a Bridge Of length prodigious joyning to the Wall Immoveable of this now fenceless world Forfeit to Death; from hence a passage broad, Smooth, easie, inoffensive down to Hell.

If there is an equivalent to Whitman's withering prescription in Democratic Vistas for treating a "cankered, crude, superstitious, and rotten" American society (11), it is surely Blake's short, dismal early prophecy, The Book of Urizen (1794), with its "petrific" realm of "dark contemplation" (WB 72).

The excessive wonder in this episode has its symbol in the stony material of the infernal bridge, whose aggregated Soyle Death with his Mace petrific, cold and dry, As with a Trident smote, and fix't as firm As Delos floating once; the rest his look Bound with Gorgonian rigor not to move.

(14) Other variants in the Journey include "I wish I had the petrific pencil of the ingenious artist above-named [Crabbe]" (201); sights "that baffle description, and require the artist's boldest pencil" (228); and "To do justice to the scene would require the pen of Mr.