Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/56

 him in his flight." Distress he knows would make the world heavier to him, which seems now "lighter than a ball of wool rolled by the wind;" and this distress material philosophies or methodical regulations would "prescribe as a medicinal potion" for a mind impaired or diseased merely by the animal superflux of spirits and childlike excess of spiritual health. But this medicine the strange and strong faculty of faith innate in the man precludes him from taking. Physical distress "is his mock and scorn; mental no man can give; and if Heaven inflicts it, all such distress is a mercy." It is not easy, but it is requisite, to realise the perpetual freshness and fulness of belief, the inalterable vigour and fervour of spirit with which Blake, heretic and mystic as he may have been, worshipped and worked; by which he was throughout life possessed and pursued. Above all gods or dæmons of creation and division, he beheld by faith in a perfect man a supreme God. "Though I have been very unhappy, I am so no longer. I am again emerged into the light of day; I still (and shall to eternity) embrace Christianity, and adore Him who is the express image of God." In the light of his especial faith all visible things were fused into the intense heat and sharpened into the keen outline of vision. He walked and laboured under other heavens, on another earth, than the earth and the heaven of material life: