Page:Life of William Blake 2, Gilchrist.djvu/422

318 Young Blake's vision of angels, when analysed, would probably occur in some such way as the following:—It was in no green-topped, suburban tree that he saw the heavenly visitants. We must rather suppose him returning, after the oxygen of the Surrey hill winds had exalted his nerves, among the orchards of some vale into which the last rays of the sun shine with their setting splendours. Here he pauses, leans over a gate, looks at a large, blossom-loaded tree, in which the threads of sunlight are entangled like gossamers which "twinkle into green and gold." A zephyr stirs the cloud of sun-stricken bloom, where white, commingled with sparkling red, flushes over leaves of emerald. Tears of boyish delight "rise from his heart, and gather to his eyes," as he gazes on it. The rays which kindle the blossoms turn his gathered tears to prisms, through which snow-white and ruby blooms, shaken along with the leaf-emeralds, quiver and dance. The impressible brain, already filled with thoughts of the "might of stars and angels," kindles suddenly into a dream-like, creative energy, and the sunny orchard becomes a Mahanaim, even to his outward eye.

So it must have been with that other similar incident. He rambles among hayfields, where white-robed girls, graceful as those whom Mulready has represented in the hay-making scene in Mr. Baring's gallery, are raking the fragrant fallen grass, and singing as they move. There are times when men not particularly imaginative, looking on the bloom of girlhood, and softened by the music of youthful voices, come very near to the illusion by which the imagination raises "a mortal to the skies," or draws "an angel down." Blake, under the enchantment of boyhood and beauty, only took the short remaining stride, and fancy became sufficiently veracious fact. * * *

It was one of the happy circumstances of Blake's career that his parents did not attempt to throw hindrances in the way of his becoming an artist: most men observe with considerable anxiety any traces of special inclination to the