Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/277

 Rh But with the dawn of that morning Orc descended in fire, "and in the vineyards of red France appeared the light of his fury." The revolution begins; all space groans; and lion and tiger are gathered together after their prey: the god of time arises as one out of a trance,

Our study of the Europe might bring more profit if we could have genuine notes appended to the text as well as to the designs. Such worth or beauty as the poem has burns dim and looms distant by comparison; but there is in it more of either than we have here time or means to indicate. At least the prelude so strangely selected for citation and thrown loose upon the pages of the biography in so crude and inexplicable a manner, may now be seen to have some tangible or presumable sense. The spirit of Europe rises revealed in the advent of revolution, sick of time and travail; pleading with the mother-goddess, Cybele of this mythology; wrapping about her veils of water and garments of cloud, in vain; "the red sun and moon and all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains." Out of her overlaboured womb arise forms and forces of change, fugitive fires of wrath, sonorous shapes of fear; and they take substance in space, but bring to their mother no help or profit, no comfort or light; to the virgin daughter of America freedom has come and fruitful violence of love, but not to the European mother. She has no hope in all the infinity of space and time; "who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band, to compass it with swaddling bands?" By comparison of