America 6

Plate 6 of America
Rosenwald LC

Text

PLATE 5
Albions Angel stood beside the Stone of night, and saw
The terror like a comet, or more like the planet red
That once inclos'd the terrible wandering comets in its sphere.
Then Mars thou wast our center, & the planets three flew round
Thy crimson disk; so e'er the Sun was rent from thy red sphere;  
The Spectre glowd his horrid length staining the temple long
With beams of blood; & thus a voice came forth, and shook the
     temple

About the Text

Stone of night may appear ambiguous, but with a later 
Book, namely Europe a Prophecy, he developed the term:
Erdman 63-4 Plates 10 and 11:
"Now arriv'd the ancient Guardian at the southern porch,
That planted thick with trees of blackest leaf, & in a vale
Obscure, inclos'd the Stone of Night; oblique it stood, o'erhung
With purple flowers and berries red; image of that sweet south,
Once open to the heavens and elevated on the human neck,
Now overgrown with hair and coverd with a stony roof,
Downward 'tis sunk beneath th' attractive north, that round the
feet
A raging whirlpool draws the dizzy enquirer to his grave:
PLATE 11

Albions Angel rose upon the Stone of Night.                  
He saw Urizen on the Atlantic;
And his brazen Book,
That Kings & Priests had copied on Earth
Expanded from North to South."

About the Image

This is a small text with a humongous picture:
The top illustrates the bound Prince in the hands of three naked
youths, the one of the left with a scale weighing the Prince and
finding him wanting. The one of the right carrying the Sword,
reminiscent of the king and Queen of France, guilotined about
this time.

The two figures below the text are said to represent the Prince
of Albion: in the center a Serpent forms a ring with coiled
tails downward. The Prince is headed downward through the rings.