Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/403

 out of the little left to them, give alms to those poorer than themselves. The angels of their love and resignation are ever with them on either side; but above, again, the unseen Heaven lies open. There sits throned that Almighty figure, filled now with inexpressible pity, almost with compunction. Around Him His angels shrink away in horror; for now the fires which clothe them—the very fires of God—are compressed in the hand of Satan into a phial for the devoted head of Job himself. Job is to be tried to the utmost; only his life is withheld from the tormentor. How this is wrought, and how Job's friends come to visit him in his desolation, are the subjects which follow; and then, in the eighth design, Job at last lifts up his voice, with arms uplifted too, among his crouching, shuddering friends, and curses the day when he was born. The next, again, is among the grandest of the series. Eliphaz the Temanite is telling Job of the thing which was secretly brought to him in the visions of the night; and above we are shown the matter of his words, the spirit which passed before his face; all blended in a wondrous partition of light, cloud, and mist of light. After this, Job kneels up and prays his reproachful friends to have pity on him, for the hand of God has touched him. And next—most terrible of all—we see embodied the accusations of torment which Job brings against his Maker: a theme hard to dwell upon, and which needs to be viewed in the awful spirit in which Blake conceived it. But in the following subject there comes at last some sign of soothing change. The sky, till now full of sunset and surging cloud, in which "the stones of the ruined home looked as if they were still burning, has here given birth to the large peaceful stars, and under them the young Elihu begins to speak: 'Lo! all these things worketh God oftentimes with man, to bring forth his soul from the pit.' The expression of Job, as he sits with folded arms, beginning to be reconciled, is full of delicate familiar nature; while the look of the three unmerciful friends, in their turn reproved, has something in it almost humorous. And then