Page:Life of William Blake 2, Gilchrist.djvu/451

 Rh him the lightning shivers, 'the all-dreaded thunder-stone' explodes, and the billowing waves of fire still curl and creep threateningly. Nevertheless, we see, farther on, the patient man—still with his attendant angels (so like the angels of Fra Angelico!)—relieving the poor as before; but the landscape is bereaved and desolate, and over the sharp stern ridges of the hills the sky encloses another heavenly conclave. The Father of Heaven and His shrinking hosts watch how Lucifer, in his wrath, gathers in his hand the bottles of heaven into one pliant orifice, from which he sprinkles plagues and pains on the head of Job. The outline comment shows us the now manifest dragons of the pit, with sombre eyes, among thorns and piercing swords of flame, which are soon to strike through his bones and flesh.

And again we see the faithful servant of God laid low. There is no vision in the upper air—all is cold and vaporous gloom. The bellying cloud becomes a reservoir of agony, wielded like a huge wine-skin of wrath, and poured, as before, on the overthrown form upon the ground. The sea blackens, and the mighty rims of the setting sun seem to depart in protest. The scathed hills and scattered ruins against which the now predominant Adversary rears himself, are abandoned by all blessing, while his unholy feet trample the righteous man into the dust. There is a series of symbols of lament in the border—a broken crook, a restless, complaining grasshopper, the toad and the shard, the thistle and the wounding thorn. Then come the friends, with uplifted hands and sorrowful eyes; while some strange, darting horizon-light, like a northern aurora, cuts out into gloomy relief the black mountain, which rises beyond a city desolate as Tadmor in the wilderness. The patriarch, sitting on his dunghill, in the following design, spreads upward his pleading, appealing, protesting hands, while the friends bow beside the dishevelled wife, and speak never a word. Light is withdrawn; clouds steam from the rock; and below, in the border, the dull fungus spreads its tent where evil dews drip on berries of