Page:The poetical works of William Blake, 1906 - Volume 1.djvu/308



device is embroidered on a flag; and the wings were jealousy — they command the air, as jealousy commands the natural heart. (Luvah, demon of the Heart, is Prince of the Air.)

10. Armed mental control seized the new-born meaning (of the Bible and of the world, as about to be taught by Blake) and hurled him jealously down into the body's lower impulses.

11. Into which it fell as fire falls.

12. '' ' Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ' ''

13. Imagination fell into flesh.

14. Whose matter-of-fact habits shrank from him.

15. Every argument that Reason could bring rushed down, seeing Jealousy's mistake, to catch Imagination and destroy him.

16. The fire that had risen in the East, stood in the South, and been flung through the West (the direction is that of the sun), entered the earth (the auricular nerves of human life, to which inspiration whispers: compare 'Vala,' Night I., lines 14, 15): brought forth an eternal brood of ideas.

17. ''The desire to live will not be repressed. If imagination be refused the mind, he will burn in the loins, and from thence re-arise, for this is the real story of the Incarnation. Compare 'Vala,' last line of Night V.''

18. 19, 20. ''The stony law that is stamped to dust is not merely—whether or not it be partly—the moral law. The eternal horses loosened from their dens of night suggest the idea, for Swedenborg taught that in Scripture the horse is symbol of the intellect, and the dens of night are evidently that literal scripture now upheld by Rome, once otherwise treated by her when all was given a spiritual meaning, even the 'daily bread' in the Lord's prayer.''

''The last words describe the universal peace fellowship without greed and law that Blake believed would come of itself if all men's hands were filled with the priceless gold of poetic imagination. Most certainly he was right, but in believing that all could be so filled if they chose, he perhaps did more than justice to his fellow-creatures. ''

''The chorus is frankly physical. The Haven here disappears from the scheme of symbolism to reappear picturesquely in 'Vala,' Night IX., line'' 60.

In the last three Nights of 'Vala,' the problem of the value and meaning, the danger and deception of mind that belong to the simple passions of the flesh are argued out in poetry, and are counterparts to the Night V., 66 to 182; Night VII., 5 to 99, 136 to 182, 171 to 126, and 439 to 699. In Night VIII., line 60 to end; in Night IX., 34, 69, 183, 186, 354, are the indicative references