Page:Facsimile of the original outlines before colouring of The songs of innocence and of experience executed by William Blake.djvu/27

 begging through the streets of Babylon, led by a child." Instinct or innocence guiding worn-out reason through the mazes of morality, one of Blake's favourite subjects. The drawing is repeated in "Jerusalem," p. 84.

Urizen in his net,—reason caught by religion,—is shown in the next design. This net means restrictive, not inspired religion, as we read in the story of Urizen in the prophetic books,—a view showing more originality and genius in its day, a hundred years ago, than we can, without effort, realize now. The picture to "Infant Sorrow" shows a child apparently reaching out towards a dream that eludes its grasp while a kind mother offers it unwelcome affection in place of golden imaginings. This again is a continuation and not only an illustration of the poem.

The corpse under the poison tree illustrates the next verses exactly, but leaves all that is obscure in them just where it was. The same may be said of the picture to "A Little Boy Lost."

The poem "To Tirzah" ends with a design that continues it—two females helplessly supporting a dying man. They are in red and grey, and show the temporary emotions, sad and glad, that are now of no avail. God the father brings him the waters of life. That there might be no error as to the effect the draught will produce, Blake has printed on his garments the warning of St. Paul against all misconception about the resurrection: "It is raised a spiritual body." After the little sketch of schoolboys playing at marbles that follows, comes the figure of the Bard, like that of the Father, and like the "father" mentioned in the Song of Innocence, "The Little Boy Lost," in white. This is the image of the "Ancient Word." It is not impossible that both these poems—"The Schoolboy" and "The Voice of the Ancient Bard"—appear here by accident or oversight, they are included among the "Songs of Innocence" in some earlier other examples. Blake frequently altered the order of his pages, and it is not always easy to be sure of his reasons for doing so.