Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/281

ÆT. 47.]

The poem, since poem we are to call it, is mostly written in prose; occasionally in metrical prose; more rarely still it breaks forth into verse. Here is the author's own account of the matter:—

There is little resemblance to the 'prophetic books' of earlier date. We hear no longer of the wars, the labours, the sufferings, the laments of Orc, Rintrah, Urizen, or Enitharmon. Religious enthusiasm, always a strong element in Blake's mental constitution, always deeply tinging his imaginative creations, seems, during the time of the lonely sea-shore life, to have been kindled into over-mastering intensity. 'I have written this poem from immediate dicta - ' tion, twelve, or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time; ' without premeditation, and even against my will; thus an ' immense poem exists which seems to be the labour of a long ' life, all produced without labour or study,' he wrote in a letter already cited to Mr. Butts. Such a belief in plenary inspiration, such a deliberate abjuring of the guidance and