Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/92

 36 spirit departed like the sighing of a gentle breeze, and he slept in company with the mighty ancestors he had formerly depicted. He passed from death to an immortal life on the 12th of August 1827, being in his sixty-ninth year. Such was the entertainment of the last hour of his life. His bursts of gladness made the room peal again. The walls rang and resounded with the beatific symphony. It was a prelude to the hymns of saints. It was an overture to the choir of heaven. It was a chaunt for the response of angels.

No taught hymns, no psalms got by rote from any hypocritical sty of cant, no sickly sanctified buffoonery, but the pure and clear stream of divine fervour, enlivened by firm faith and unrelenting hope. "By the rivers he had sat down and wept: he had hung his harp upon the willow: for how should he sing the Lord's song in a strange land"; but he is now on the borders of his promise, he is tuning his strings, he is waking up his lyre, he is lifting up the throat as the lark in the clouds of morn. He is rising, he is on the wing: sing, ye sons of morning: for the vapours of night are flown, and the dews of darkness are passed away.