Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/131

 Rh lion and the lamb; no such heaven of sinless animal life was ever conceived so intensely and sweetly.

The leap and fall of the verse is so perfect as to make it a fit garment and covering for the profound tenderness of faith and soft strength of innocent impulse embodied in it. But the whole of this hymn of Night is wholly beautiful; being perhaps one of the two poems of loftiest loveliness among all the Songs of Innocence. The other is that called The Little Black Boy; a poem especially exquisite for its noble forbearance from vulgar pathos and achievement of the highest and most poignant sweetness of speech and sense; in which the poet's mysticism is baptized with pure water and taught to speak as from faultless lips of children, to such effect as this.

Other poems of a very perfect beauty are those of the Piper, the Lamb, the Chimney-sweeper, and the two-days-old baby; all, for the music in them, more like the