Chapter IX (3)

We have given some of the most subtle and venturous "Proverbs of Hell"--samples of their depth of doctrine and plainness of speech. But even here Blake rarely indulges in such excess and exposure. There are jewels in this treasure-house neither set so roughly nor so sharply cut as these; they may be seen in the _Life_, taken out and reset, so as to offend no customer. And these sayings must themselves be read by the light of Blake's life and weighed against others of his words not less weighty than they. Apology shall now and always remain as far from us as it was in life from Blake himself; to excuse and to explain are different offices. To plead for his acquittal on the base and foolish ground that he meant no harm, knew not what he did, had no design or desire to afflict or offend, is no office for his counsel; who must strive at least to speak not less frankly and clearly than did Blake when he could speak in his own cause. Neither have we to approve or condemn; but only to endeavour that we may see the right and deliver the truth as to this man and his life. "That I cannot live," he says, in the Butts correspondence, "without doing my duty to lay up treasures in heaven, is certain and determined, and to this I have long made up my mind. And why this should be made an objection to me, while drunkenness, lewdness, gluttony, and even idleness itself does not hurt other men, let Satan himself explain. The thing I have most at heart--more than life, or all that seems to make life comfortable without (it)--is the interest of true religion and science." His one fear is to "omit any duty to my station as a soldier of Christ;" a fear that "gives him the greatest torments;" for "if our footsteps slide in clay, how can we do otherwise than fear and tremble?" And such books as these were part of his spiritual taskwork. From whencesoever the inspiration of them came, inspiration it was and no invention. He is content with that knowledge; and if it please the hearer to call it diabolic, diabolic it shall be. If he has a devil, he will make the most and the best of him. If these things come from hell, let us look to it and hold them fast, that we may see what it is that divides hell from heaven.

"As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its
advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the Angel
sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up.
Now is the dominion of Edom, and the return of Adam into Paradise;
see Isaiah xxxiv. and xxxv. chap.

"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,
Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

"From these Contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil.
Good is the passive that obeys Reason.

"Evil is the active springing from Energy.

"_Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell._

"THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL.

"All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following
Errors.

"1. That man has two real existing principles--viz., a Body and a
Soul.

"2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body; and that
Reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul.

"3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

"But the following contraries to these are True.

"1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul, for that called Body is a
portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of
Soul in this age.

"2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the
bound or outward circumference of Energy.

"3. Energy is Eternal Delight.

"Those who restrain desire to do so because theirs is weak enough to
be restrained; and the restrainer, or reason, usurps its place and
governs the unwilling.

"And being restrained it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only
the shadow of desire.

"The history of this is written in 'Paradise Lost,' and the Governor,
or Reason, is called Messiah.

"And the original Archangel, or possessor of the command of the
heavenly host, is called the Devil or Satan, and his children are
called Sin and Death.

"But in the Book of Job Milton's Messiah is called Satan.

"For this history has been adopted by both parties.

"It indeed appeared to Reason as if Desire was cast out; but the
Devil's account is, that the Messiah fell, and formed a heaven of
what he stole from the Abyss.

"This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send
the comforter or Desire, that Reason may have Ideas to build on, the
Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming
fire. Know that after Christ's death, he became Jehovah.

"But in Milton the Father is Destiny, the Son a Ratio of the five
Senses, and the Holy Ghost, Vacuum.

"NOTE.--The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels
and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a
true Poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it."

Something of these high matters we have seen before, and should now be able to allow for the subtle intricate fashion in which Blake labours to invert the weapons of his antagonists upon themselves. Neither can the banns of marriage be published between heaven and hell with the voice of a parish clerk. This prophet came to do what Swedenborg his precursor had left undone, being but the watchman by the empty sepulchre, and his writings as the grave-clothes cast off by the risen Christ. Blake's estimate of Swedenborg, right or wrong, was, as we shall see, distinct and consistent; to this effect; that his inspiration was limited and timid, superficial and derivative; that he was content with leaves and husks, and had not the courage to examine the root and the kernel of things; that he clove to the heaven and shrank from the hell of other men; whereas, to men in whom "a new heaven is begun," the one must not be terrible nor the other desirable. To them the "flaming fire" wherein dwells a God whom men call devil, must seem a purer element of life than the starry and cloudy space wherein dwells a devil whom they call God. It must be remembered that Blake uses the current terms of religion, now as types of his own peculiar faith, now in the sense of ordinary preachers: impugning therefore at one time what at another he will seem to vindicate. Vague and violent as this overture may appear, it must be followed with care, that the writer's intensity of spiritual faith may be hereafter kept in sight. The senses, "the chief inlets of soul in this age" of brute doubt and brute belief, are worthy only as parts of the soul. This, it cannot be too much repeated and insisted on, this and no prurience of porcine appetite for rotten apples, no vulgarity of porcine adoration for unctuous wash, is what lies at the root of Blake's sensual doctrine. Let no reader now or ever forget, that while others will admit nothing beyond the body, the mystic will admit nothing outside the soul. That the two extremes, if reduced to hard practice, might run round and meet, not without lamentably curious consequences, those may assert who will; it is none of our business to decide. Even granting that the result will be about equivalent if one man does for his soul's sake all that another would do for his body's sake, we might plead that the difference of thought and eye between these two would remain great and important. Indulgence bracketed to faith and vivified by that vigorous contact with things divine is not (we might say) the same, whether seen from the actual side of life or from the speculative, as indulgence cut loose and left to decompose. But these pleas we will leave the mystic to advance, if it please him, on his own behalf.

"A MEMORABLE FANCY.

"As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the
enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity,
I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as the sayings used
in a nation mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell show the
nature of the Infernal wisdom better than any description of
buildings or garments. When I came home, on the abyss of the five
senses, where a flat-sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw
a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the
rock; with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence, now
perceived by the minds of men, and read by them on earth:--

"'How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?'"

Here follow the "Proverbs of Hell," which give us the quintessence and the most fine gold of Blake's alembic. Each, whether earnest or satirical, slight or great in manner, is full of that passionate wisdom and bright rapid strength proper to the step and speech of gods. The simplest give us a measure of his energy, as this:--"Think in the morning, act in the noon, eat in the evening, sleep in the night." The highest have a light and resonance about them, as though in effect from above or beneath; a spirit which lifts thought upon the high levels of verse.

From the ensuing divisions of the book we shall give full extracts; for these detached sections have a grace and coherence which we shall not always find in Blake; and the crude excerpts given in the _Life_ are inadequate to help the reader much towards a clear comprehension of the main scheme.

"The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or
Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the
properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and
whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive.

"And, particularly, they studied the genius of each city and country,
placing it under its mental deity.

"Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved
the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities
from their objects: thus began Priesthood,

"Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales;

"And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things.

"Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast."

From this we pass to higher tones of exposition. The next passage is one of the clearest and keenest in the book, full of faith and sacred humour, none the less sincere for its dramatic form. The subtle simplicity of expression is excellently subservient to the intricate force of thought.

"A MEMORABLE FANCY.

"The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how
they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether
they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and
so be the cause of imposition.

"Isaiah answered, 'I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite or
organical perception; but my senses discovered the infinite in
everything, and as I was then persuaded, I remain confirmed, that the
voice of honest indignation is the voice of God. I cared not for
consequences, but wrote.'

"Then I asked, 'Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it
so?'

"He replied, 'All poets believe that it does, and in ages of
imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains. But many are not
capable of a firm persuasion of anything.'

"Then Ezekiel said, 'The philosophy of the East taught the first
principles of human perception. Some nations held one principle for
the origin and some another. We of Israel taught that the Poetic
Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle, and all the
others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the
Priests and Philosophers of other countries, and prophesying that all
Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours, and to be the
tributaries of the Poetic Genius. It was this that our great poet
King David desired so fervently and invokes so pathetically, saying
by this he conquers enemies and governs kingdoms; and we so loved
our God, that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding
nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions the
vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the
Jews.

"'This,' said he, 'like all firm persuasions, is come to pass, for
all nations believe the Jews' code and worship the Jews' God, and
what greater subjection can be?'

"I heard this with some wonder, and must confess my own conviction.
After dinner, I asked Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works.
He said none of equal value was lost.

"Ezekiel said the same of his.

"I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years?
He answered, the same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian.

"I then asked Ezekiel, why he eat dung, and lay so long on his right
and left side? he answered, the desire of raising other men into a
perception of the infinite. This the North American tribes practise;
and is he honest who resists his genius or conscience, only for the
sake of present ease or gratification?"

The doctrine of perception through not with the senses, beyond not in the organs, as also of the absolute existence of things thus apprehended, is again directly enforced in our next excerpt; in praise of which we will say nothing, but leave the words to burn their way in as they may.

"The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the
end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

"For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave
his guard at the tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation
will be consumed, and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now
appears finite and corrupt.

"This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

"But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is
to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method,
by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting
apparent surfaces away and displaying the infinite which was hid.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to
man as it is, infinite.

"For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through
narrow chinks of his cavern."

After which corrosive touch of revelation there follows a vision of knowledge; first, the human nature is cleansed and widened into shape, then decorated, then enlarged and built about with stately buildings for guest-chambers and treasure-houses; then the purged metal of knowledge, melted into form with divine violence, is made fluid and vital, that it may percolate and permeate the whole man through every pore of his spirit; then the metal is cast forth and put to use. All forms and forces of the world, viper and lion, half-human things and nameless natures, serve to help in this work; all manner of aspiration and inspiration, wrath and faith, love and labour, do good service here.

"The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence, and now
seem to live in it in chains, are in truth the causes of its life and
the sources of all activity; but the chains are, the cunning of weak
and tame minds, which have power to resist energy; according to the
proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning.

"Thus one portion of being is the Prolific, the other, the Devouring;
to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains; but it
is not so; he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the
whole.

"But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific, unless the Devourer as
a sea received the excess of his delights.

"Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific?

"I answer, God only Acts and Is in existing beings or Men.

"These two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be
enemies; whoever tries to reconcile them, seeks to destroy existence.

"Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.

"NOTE.--Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to separate them, as
in the Parable of sheep and goats! and he says I came not to send
Peace but a Sword.

"Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of the
Antediluvians who are our Energies."

These are hard sayings; who can hear them? At first sight also, as we were forewarned, this passage seems at direct variance with that other in the overture, where our prophet appears at first sight, and only appears, to speak of the fallen "Messiah" as the same with the Christ of his belief. Verbally coherent we cannot hope to make the two passages; but it must be remarked and remembered that the very root or kernel of this creed is not the assumed humanity of God, but the achieved divinity of Man; not incarnation from without, but development from within; not a miraculous passage into flesh, but a natural growth into godhead. Christ, as the type or sample of manhood, thus becomes after death the true Jehovah; not, as he seems to the vulgar, the extraneous and empirical God of creeds and churches, human in no necessary or absolute sense, the false and fallen phantom of his enemy, Zeus in the mask of Prometheus. We are careful to note and as far as may be to correct any apparent slips or shortcomings in expression, only because if left without a touch of commentary they may seem to make worse confusion than they do actually make. Subtle, trenchant and profound as is this philosophy, there is no radical flaw in the book, no positive incongruity, no inherent contradiction. A single consistent principle keeps alive the large relaxed limbs, makes significant the dim great features of this strange faith. It is but at the opening that the words are even partially inadequate and obscure. Revision alone could have righted and straightened them; and revision the author would not give. Impatient of their insufficiency, and incapable of any labour that implies rest, he shook them together and flung them out in an irritated hurried manner, regardless who might gather them up or let them lie.

In the next and longest division of the book, direct allegory and imaginative vision are indivisibly mixed into each other. The stable and mill, the twisted root and inverted fungus, are transparent symbols enough: the splendid and stormy apocalypse of the abyss is a chapter of pure vision or poetic invention. Why "Swedenborg's volumes" are the weights used to sink the travellers from the "glorious clime" to the passive and iron void between the fixed stars and the coldest of the remote planets, will be conceivable in due time.

"A MEMORABLE FANCY.

"An Angel came to me and said, 'O pitiable foolish young man! O
horrible! O dreadful state! Consider the hot burning dungeon thou art
preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art going in
such career.'

"I said, 'Perhaps you will be willing to show me my eternal lot and
we will contemplate upon it and see whether your lot or mine is most
desirable.'

"So he took me through a stable and through a church and down into
the church vault at the end of which was a mill; through the mill we
went, and came to a cave; down the winding cavern we groped our
tedious way, till a void, boundless as a nether sky, appeared beneath
us, and we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity;
but I said, 'If you please, we will commit ourselves to this void,
and see whether Providence is here also; if you will not, I will.'

"But he answered, 'Do not presume, O young man, but as we here
remain, behold thy lot, which will soon appear when the darkness
passes away.'

"So I remained with him, sitting in the twisted root of an oak; he
was suspended in a fungus, which hung with the head downward into the
deep.

"By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke of a
burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black
but shining; round it were fiery tracks on which revolved vast
spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather swam in the
infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from
corruption; and the air was full of them, and seemed composed of
them; these are Devils, and are called Powers of the air. I now asked
my companion which was my eternal lot? he said, between the black and
white spiders.

"But now, from between the black and white spiders a cloud and fire
burst and rolled through the deep blackening all beneath, so that the
nether deep grew black as a sea and rolled with a terrible noise:
beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till
looking east between the clouds and the waves, we saw a cataract of
blood mixed with fire, and not many stones' throw from us appeared
and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent; at last, to the
east, distant about three degrees, appeared a fiery crest above the
waves; slowly it reared, like a ridge of golden rocks, till we
discovered two globes of crimson fire, from which the sea fled away
in clouds of smoke: and now we saw it was the head of Leviathan; his
forehead was divided into streaks of green and purple, like those on
a tiger's forehead: soon we saw his mouth and red gills hang just
above the raging foam, tinging the black deep with beams of blood,
advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence.

"My friend the Angel climbed up from his station into the mill; I
remained alone, and then this appearance was no more; but I found
myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight,
hearing a harper who sung to the harp, and his theme was, The man who
never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles
of the mind.

"But I arose, and sought for the mill, and there I found my Angel,
who, surprised, asked me how I escaped?

"I answered, 'All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics: for when
you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper.
But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I show you yours?' He
laughed at my proposal: but I by force suddenly caught him in my
arms, and flew westerly through the night, till we were elevated
above the earth's shadow: then I flung myself with him directly into
the body of the sun; here I clothed myself in white, and taking in my
hand Swedenborg's volumes, sunk from the glorious clime, and passed
all the planets till we came to Saturn: here I staid to rest, and
then leaped into the void, between Saturn and the fixed stars.

"'Here,' said I, 'is your lot, in this space, if space it may be
called.' Soon we saw the stable and the church, and I took him to the
altar and opened the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which I
descended, driving the Angel before me; soon we saw seven houses of
brick; one we entered; in it were a number of monkeys, baboons, and
all of that species chained by the middle, grinning and snatching at
one another, but withheld by the shortness of their chains; however,
I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were
caught by the strong and, with a grinning aspect, first coupled with
and then devoured, by plucking off first one limb and then another,
till the body was left a helpless trunk; this, after grinning and
kissing it with seeming kindness, they devoured too; and here and
there I saw one savourily picking the flesh off of his own tail. As
the stench terribly annoyed us both, we went into the mill, and I in
my hand brought the skeleton of a body, which in the mill was
Aristotle's 'Analytics.'

"So the Angel said; 'Thy phantasy has imposed upon me, and thou
oughtest to be ashamed.'

"I answered; 'We impose on one another, and it is but lost time to
converse with you, whose works are only Analytics.'"

The "seven houses of brick" we may take to be a reminiscence of the seven churches of St. John; as indeed the traces of former evangelists and prophets are never long wanting when we track the steps of this one. Lest however we be found unawares on the side of these hapless angels and baboons, we will abstain with all due care from any not indispensable analysis. It is evident that between pure "phantasy" and mere "analytics" the great gulf must remain fixed, and either party appear to the other deceptive and deceived. That impulsive energy and energetic faith are the only means, whether used as tools of peace or as weapons of war, to pave or to fight our way toward the realities of things, was plainly the creed of Blake; as also that these realities, once well in sight, will reverse appearance and overthrow tradition: hell will appear as heaven, and heaven as hell. The abyss once entered with due trust and courage appears a place of green pastures and gracious springs: the paradise of resignation once beheld with undisturbed eyes appears a place of emptiness or bondage, delusion or cruelty. On the humorous beauty and vigour of these symbols we need not expatiate; in these qualities Rabelais and Dante together could hardly have excelled Blake at his best. What his meaning is should by this time be as clear as the meaning of a mystic need be; it is but partially expressible by words, as (to borrow Blake's own symbol) the inseparable soul is yet but incompletely expressible through the body. Whether it be right or wrong, foolish or wise, we will neither inquire nor assert: the autocercophagous monkeys of the mill may be left to settle that for themselves with "Urizen."

We come now to a chapter of comments, intercalated between two sufficiently memorable "fancies."

"I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of
themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence
sprouting from systematic reasoning.

"Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new, though it is only
the Contents or Index of already published books.

"A man carried a monkey about for a show, and because he was a little
wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceived himself as much wiser
than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg: he shows the folly of
churches and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are
religious and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net.

"Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth.

"Now hear another: He has written all the old falsehoods.

"And now hear the reason: He conversed with Angels who are all
religious and conversed not with Devils who all hate religion; for he
was incapable, through his conceited notions.

"Thus Swedenborg's writings are a recapitulation of all superficial
opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further.

"Hear now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may, from
the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand
volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's; and from those of Dante or
Shakespeare, an infinite number. But when he has done this, let him
not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a
candle in sunshine."

This also we will leave for those to decide who please, and attend to the next and final vision. That the fire of inspiration should absorb and convert to its own nature all denser and meaner elements of mind, was the prophet's sole idea of redemption: the dead cloud of belief consumed becomes the vital flame of faith.

"A MEMORABLE FANCY.

"Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire, who arose before an Angel
that sat on a cloud, and the Devil uttered these words.

"The worship of God is: Honouring his gifts in other men, each
according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best; those who
envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God.

"The Angel hearing this became almost blue, but mastering himself, he
grew yellow, and at last white, pink, and smiling; and then replied,
Thou Idolator, is not God one? and is not he visible in Jesus Christ?
and has not Jesus Christ given his sanction to the law of ten
commandments? and are not all other men fools, sinners, and nothings?

"The Devil answered; Bray a fool in a mortar with wheat, yet shall
not his folly be beaten out of him: if Jesus Christ is the greatest
man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he
has given his sanction to the law of the ten commandments: did he not
mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbath's God? murder those who
were murdered, because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken
in adultery? steal the labour of others to support him? bear false
witness when he omitted making a defence before Pilate? covet when he
prayed for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of
their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no
virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments. Jesus was
all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.

"When he had so spoken, I beheld the Angel who stretched out his arms
embracing the flame of fire, and he was consumed, and arose as
Elijah.

"NOTE. This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular
friend: we often read the Bible together in its infernal or
diabolical sense, which the world shall have if they behave well.

"I have also the Bible of Hell, which the world shall have, whether
they will or no."

Under this title at least the world was never favoured with it; but we may presumably taste some savour of that Bible in these pages. After this the book is wound up in a lyric rapture, not without some flutter and tumour of style, but full of clear high music and flame-like aspiration. Epilogue and prologue are both nearer in manner to the dubious hybrid language of the succeeding books of prophecy than to the choice and noble prose in which the rest of this book is written. The overture must be read by the light of its meaning; of the mysterious universal mother and her son, the latest birth of the world, we have already taken account. The date of 1790 must here be kept in mind, that all may remember what appearances of change were abroad, what manner of light and tempest was visible upon earth, when the hopes of such men as Blake made their stormy way into speech or song.

"A SONG OF LIBERTY.

1. The Eternal Female groan'd! it was heard over all the Earth.

2. Albion's coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!

3. Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers, and
mutter across the ocean. France, rend down thy dungeon;

4. Golden Spain, burst the barriers of old Rome;

5. Cast thy keys, O Rome, into the deep down falling, even to
eternity down falling;

6. And weep.

7. In her trembling hands she took the new-born terror howling:

8. On those infinite mountains of light now barred out by the
Atlantic sea, the new-born fire stood before the starry King!

9. Flag'd with grey-browed snows and thunderous visages the jealous
wings waved over the deep.

10. The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield, forth
went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and hurled the
new-born wonder thro' the starry night.

11. The fire, the fire is falling!

12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance: O
Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and wine; O African!
black African! (go, winged thought, widen his forehead.)

13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into
the western sea.

14. Waked from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled
away.

15. Down rushed, beating his wings in vain, the jealous King; his
grey-browed councillors, thunderous warriors, curled veterans, among
helms and shields, and chariots, horses, elephants; banners, castles,
slings and rocks;

16. Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's
dens;

17. All night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded
emerge round the gloomy King.

18. With thunder and fire, leading his starry hosts thro' the waste
wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing his beamy
eyelids over the deep in dark dismay;

19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning
plumes her golden breast,

20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to
dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying,
Empire is no more! and now the lion and the wolf shall cease.

CHORUS.

Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn no longer in deadly black with
hoarse note curse the sons of joy; Nor his accepted brethren, whom,
tyrant, he calls free, lay the bound or build the roof; Nor pale
religious letchery call that virginity that wishes but acts not;

For everything that lives is Holy."

And so, as with fire and thunder--"thunder of thought, and flames of fierce desire"--is this _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ at length happily consummated; the prophet, as a fervent paranymph, standing by to invoke upon the wedded pair his most unclerical benediction. Those who are not bidden to the bridegroom's supper may as well keep away, lest worse befall them, not having a wedding garment. For us there remains little to say, now that the torches are out, the nuts scattered, the songs silent, and the saffron faded from the veil. We will wish them a quiet life, and an heir who may combine the merits and capacities of either parent. It were pleasant enough, but too superfluous, to dwell upon the beauty of this nuptial hymn; to bid men remark what eloquence, what subtlety, what ardour of wisdom, what splendour of thought, is here; how far it outruns, not in daring alone but in sufficiency, all sayings of minor mystics who were not also poets; how much of lofty love and of noble faith underlies and animates these rapid and fervent words; what greatness of spirit and of speech there was in the man who, living as Blake lived, could write as Blake has written. Those who cannot see what is implied may remain unable to tolerate what is expressed; and those who can read aright need no index of ours.[51]

The decorations of this great work, though less large and complete than those of the subsequent prophecies, are full of noble and subtle beauty. Over every page faint fibres and flickering threads of colour weave a net of intricate design. Skies cloven with flame and thunder, half-blasted trees round which huddled forms of women or men cower and cling, strange beasts and splendid flowers, alternate with the engraved text; and throughout all the sunbeams of heaven and fires of hell shed fiercer or softer light. In minute splendour and general effect the pages of Blake's next work fall short of these; though in the _Visions of the Daughters of Albion_ the separate designs are fuller and more composed. This poem, written in a sort of regular though quasi-lyrical blank verse, is more direct and lucid in purpose than most of these books; but the style is already laxer, veers more swiftly from point to point, stands weaker on its feet, and speaks with more of a hurried and hysterical tone. With "formidable moral questions," as the biographer has observed, it does assuredly deal; and in a way somewhat formidable. This, we are told, "the exemplary man had good right to do." Exemplary or not, he in common with all men had undoubtedly such a right; and was not slow to use it. Nowhere else has the prophet so fully and vehemently set forth his doctrine of indulgence; too Albigensian or antinomian this time to be given out again in more decorous form. Of pure mythology there is happily little; of pure allegory even less. "The eye sees more than the heart knows;" these words are given on the title-page by way of motto or key-note. Above this inscription a single design fills the page; in it the title is written with characters of pale fire upon cloud and rainbow; the figure of the typical woman, held fast to earth but by one foot, seems to soar and yearn upwards with straining limbs that flutter like shaken flame: appealing in vain to the mournful and merciless Creator, whose sad fierce face looks out beyond and over her, swathed and cradled in bloodlike fire and drifted rain. In the prologue we get a design expressive of plain and pure pleasure; a woman gathers a child from the heart of a blossom as it breaks, and the sky is full of the golden stains and widening roses of a sundawn. But elsewhere, from the frontispiece to the end, nothing meets us but emblems of restraint and error; figures rent by the beaks of eagles though lying but on mere cloud, chained to no solid rock by the fetters only of their own faiths or fancies; leafless trunks that rot where they fell; cold ripples of barren sea that break among caves of bondage. The perfect woman, Oothoon, is one with the spirit of the great western world; born for rebellion and freedom, but half a slave yet, and half a harlot. "Bromion," the violent Titan, subject himself to ignorance and sorrow, has defiled her;[52] "Theotormon," her lover, emblem of man held in bondage to creed or law, will not become one with her because of her shame; and she, who gathered in time of innocence the natural flower of delight, calls now for his eagles to rend her polluted flesh with cruel talons of remorse and ravenous beaks of shame: enjoys his infliction, accepts her agony, and reflects his severe smile in the mirrors of her purged spirit.[53] But he

"sits wearing the threshold hard
With secret tears; beneath him sound like waves on a desert shore
The voice of slaves beneath the sun, and children bought with money."

From her long melodious lamentation we give one continuous excerpt here. Sweet, and lucid as _Thel_, it is more subtle and more strong; the allusions to American servitude and English aspiration, which elsewhere distract and distort the sense and scheme of the poem, are here well cleared away.

"I cry Arise, O Theotormon; for the village dog
Barks at the breaking day; the nightingale has done lamenting;
The lark does rustle in the green corn, and the eagle returns
From nightly prey and lifts his golden beak to the pure east;
Shaking the dust from his immortal pinions, to awake
The sun that sleeps too long. Arise my Theotormon, I am pure
Because the night is gone that closed me in its deadly black.
They told me that the night and day were all that I could see;
They told me that I had five senses to enclose me up,
And they enclosed my infinite beam into a narrow circle,
And sank my heart into the abyss, a red round globe hotburning
Till all from life I was obliterated and erased.

Instead of morn arises a bright shadow like an eye
In the eastern cloud; instead of night a sickly charnel-house.
But Theotormon hears me not: to him the night and morn
Are both alike; a night of sighs, a morning of fresh tears.
And none but Bromion can hear my lamentations.

With what sense is it that the chicken shuns the ravenous hawk?
With what sense does the tame pigeon measure out the expanse?
With what sense does the bee form cells? have not the mouse and frog
Eyes and ears and sense of touch? yet are their habitations
And their pursuits as different as their forms and as their joy.
Ask the wild ass why he refuses burdens, and the meek camel
Why he loves man: is it because of eye, ear, mouth or skin,
Or breathing nostrils? no: for these the wolf and tiger have.
Ask the blind worm the secrets of the grave and why her spires
Love to curl around the bones of death: and ask the ravenous snake
Where she gets poison; and the winged eagle why he loves the sun;
And then tell me the thoughts of man, that have been hid of old.

Silent I hover all the night, and all day could be silent,
If Theotormon once would turn his loved eyes upon me;
How can I be defiled when I reflect thy image pure?
Sweetest the fruit that the worm feeds on, and the soul prey'd on by woe;
The new-washed lamb tinged with the village smoke, and the bright swan
By the red earth of our immortal river; I bathe my wings
And I am white and pure to hover round Theotormon's breast.

Then Theotormon broke his silence, and he answered;
Tell me what is the night or day to one overflowed with woe?
Tell me what is a thought? and of what substance is it made?
Tell me what is joy? and in what gardens do joys grow?
And in what rivers swim the sorrows? and upon what mountains
Wave shadows of discontent? and in what houses dwell the wretched
Drunken with woe forgotten, and shut up from cold despair?

Tell me where dwell the thoughts forgotten till thou call them forth?
Tell me where dwell the joys of old? and where the ancient loves?
And when will they renew again and the night of oblivion be past?
That I might traverse times and spaces far remote and bring
Comfort into a present sorrow and a night of pain!
Where goest thou, O thought? to what remote land is thy flight?
If thou returnest to the present moment of affliction
Wilt thou bring comforts on thy wings and dews and honey and balm
Or poison from the desert wilds, from the eyes of the envier?"

After this Bromion, with less musical lamentation, asks whether for all things there be not one law established? "Thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have fruit; but knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth to gratify senses unknown, in worlds over another kind of seas?" Are there other wars, other sorrows, and other joys than those of external life? But the one law surely does exist "for the lion and the ox," for weak and strong, wise and foolish, gentle and fierce; and for all who rebel against it there are prepared from everlasting the fires and the chains of hell. So speaks the violent slave of heaven; and after a day and a night Oothoon lifts up her voice in sad rebellious answer and appeal.

"O Urizen, Creator of men! mistaken Demon of heaven!
Thy joys are tears: thy labour vain, to form man to thine image;
How can one joy absorb another? are not different joys
Holy, eternal, infinite? and each joy is a Love.

Does not the great mouth laugh at a gift? and the narrow eyelids mock
At the labour that is above payment? and wilt thou take the ape
For thy counsellor, or the dog for a schoolmaster to thy children?

* * * * *

Does the whale worship at thy footsteps as the hungry dog?
Or does he scent the mountain prey, because his nostrils wide
Draw in the ocean? does his eye discern the flying cloud
As the raven's eye? or does he measure the expanse like the vulture?
Does the still spider view the cliffs where eagles hide their young?
Or does the fly rejoice because the harvest is brought in?
Does not the eagle scorn the earth and despise the treasures beneath?
But the mole knoweth what is there, and the worm shall tell it thee."

Perhaps there is no loftier note of music and of thought struck anywhere throughout these prophecies. For the rest, we must tread carefully over the treacherous hot ashes strewn about the latter end of this book: which indeed speaks plainly enough for once, and with high equal eloquence; but to no generally acceptable effect. The one matter of marriage laws is still beaten upon, still hammered at with all the might of an insurgent prophet: to whom it is intolerable that for the sake of mere words and mere confusions of thought "she who burns with youth and knows no fixed lot" should be "bound by spells of law to one she loathes," should "drag the chain of life in weary lust," and "bear the wintry rage of a harsh terror driven to madness, bound to hold a rod over her shrinking shoulders all the day, and all the night to turn the wheel of false desire;" intolerable that she should be driven by "longings that wake her womb" to bring forth not men but some monstrous "abhorred birth of cherubs," imperfect, artificial, abortive; counterfeits of holiness and mockeries of purity; things of barren or perverse nature, creatures inhuman or diseased, that live as a pestilence lives and pass away as a meteor passes; "till the child dwell with one he hates, and do the deed he loathes, and the impure scourge force his seed into its unripe birth ere yet his eyelids can behold the arrows of the day:" the day whose blinding beams had surely somewhat affected the prophet's own eyesight, and left his eyelids lined with strange colours of fugitive red and green that fades into black. However, all these things shall be made plain by death; for "over the porch is written Take thy bliss, O man! and sweet shall be thy taste, and sweet thy infant joys renew." On the one hand is innocence, on the other modesty; infancy is "fearless, lustful, happy;" who taught it modesty, "subtle modesty, child of night and sleep?" Once taught to dissemble, to call pure things impure, to "catch virgin joy, and brand it with the name of whore and sell it in the night;" once corrupted and misled, "religious dreams and holy vespers light thy smoky fires: once were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn." Not pleasure but hypocrisy is the unclean thing; Oothoon is no harlot, but "a virgin filled with virgin fancies, open to joy and to delight wherever it appears; if in the morning sun I find it, there my eyes are fixed in happy copulation:" and so forth--further than we need follow.

"Is it because acts are not lovely that thou seekest solitude
Where the horrible darkness is impressed with reflections of desire?--

Father of Jealousy, be thou accursed from the earth!
Why hast thou taught my Theotormon this accursed thing?
Till beauty fades from off my shoulders, darkened and cast out,
A solitary shadow wailing on the margin of non-entity;"

as in a later prophecy Ahania, cast out by the jealous God, being the type or embodiment of this sacred natural love "free as the mountain wind."

"Can that be love which drinks another as a sponge drinks water?
That clouds with jealousy his nights, with weepings all the days?

* * * * *

Such is self-love, that envies all; a creeping skeleton
With lamp-like eyes watching around the frozen marriage-bed."

But instead of the dark-grey "web of age" spun around man by self-love, love spreads nets to catch for him all wandering and foreign pleasures, pale as mild silver or ruddy as flaming gold; beholds them without grudging drink deep of various delight, "red as the rosy morning, lustful as the first-born beam." No single law for all things alike; the sun will not shine in the miser's secret chamber, nor the brightest cloud drop fruitful rain on his stone threshold; for one thing night is good and for another thing day: nothing is good and nothing evil to all at once.

"'The sea-fowl takes the wintry blast for a covering to her limbs,
And the wild snake the pestilence, to adorn him with gems and gold;
And trees and birds and beasts and men behold their eternal joy.
Arise, you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy!
Arise and drink your bliss! For everything that lives is holy.'

Thus every morning wails Oothoon, but Theotormon sits
Upon the margined ocean, conversing with shadows dire.

The daughters of Albion hear her woes, and echo back her sighs."

It may be feared that Oothoon has yet to wait long before Theotormon will leave off "conversing with shadows dire;" nor is it surprising that this poem won such small favour; for had it not seemed inexplicable it must have seemed unbearable. Blake, as evidently as Shelley, did in all innocence believe that ameliorated humanity would be soon qualified to start afresh on these new terms after the saving advent of French and American revolutions. "All good things are in the West;" thence in the teeth of "Urizen" shall human deliverance come at length. In the same year Blake's prophecy of _America_ came forth to proclaim this message over again. Upon this book we need not dwell so long; it has more of thunder and less of lightning than the former prophecies; more of sonorous cloud and less of explicit fire. The prelude, though windy enough, is among Blake's nobler myths: the divine spirit of rebellious redemption, imprisoned as yet by the gods of night and chaos, is fed and sustained in secret by the "nameless" spirit of the great western continent; nameless and shadowy, a daughter of chaos, till the day of their fierce and fruitful union.

"Silent as despairing love and strong as jealousy,
The hairy shoulders rend the links, free are the wrists of fire."

At his embrace "she cast aside her clouds and smiled her first-born smile, as when a black cloud shows its lightnings to the silent deep."

"Soon as she saw the terrible boy then burst the virgin's cry;
I love thee; I have found thee, and I will not let thee go.
Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa,
And thou art fallen to give me life in regions of dark death."

Then begins the agony of revolution, her frost and his fire mingling in pain; and the poem opens as with a sound and a light of storm. It is throughout in the main a mere expansion and dilution of the "Song of Liberty" which we have already heard; and in the interludes of the great fight between Urizen and Orc the human names of American or English leaders fall upon the ear with a sudden incongruous clash: not perhaps unfelt by the author's ear also, but unheeded in his desire to make vital and vivid the message he came to deliver. The action is wholly swamped by the allegory; hardly is it related how the serpent-formed "hater of dignities, lover of wild rebellion and transgressor of God's Law," arose in red clouds, "a wonder, a human fire;" "heat but not light went from him;" "his terrible limbs were fire;" his voice shook the ancient Druid temple of tyranny and faith, proclaiming freedom and "the fiery joy that Urizen perverted to ten commands;" the "punishing demons" of the God of jealousy

"Crouch howling before their caverns deep like skins dried in the wind;
They cannot smite the wheat nor quench the fatness of the earth;
They cannot smite with sorrows nor subdue the plough and spade;
For terrible men stand on the shores, and in their robes I see
Children take refuge from the lightnings. * * * *
Ah vision from afar! ah rebel form that rent the ancient heavens!
* * * * Red flames the crest rebellious
And eyes of death; the harlot womb oft opened in vain
Heaves in eternal circles, now the times are returned upon thee."

"Thus wept the angel voice" of the guardian-angel of Albion; but the thirteen angels of the American provinces rent off their robes and threw down their sceptres and cast in their lot with the rebel; gathered together where on the hills

"called Atlantean hills,
Because from their bright summits you may pass to the golden world,
An ancient palace, archetype of mighty emperies,
Rears its immortal pinnacles, built in the forest of God
By Ariston the king of beauty for his stolen bride."