Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/184

 168 We may now as well look into a later division of the poem, where Christ is tempted of Satan to obey.

This divine revolt and deliverance of the spiritual human "prey" out of the hands of law and fangs of religion is made matter of accusation against him by the "unredeemable part of the world" of which we spoke—using here as its mouthpiece the "shadowy man" or phantasmal shell of man, which "rolled away" when the times were full "from the limbs of Jesus, to make them his prey":—

But Christ, instead of becoming a prey to it, himself makes his prey of this unclean shadow or ghastly ghost