Page:William Blake (Chesterton).djvu/159

WILLIAM BLAKE Now in the point which is here prominently before us there is a quotation (indeed there is more than one) which follows this same fantastic line. Let the ordinary modern man, who is, generally speaking, not a materialist and not a mystic, read first these two lines from the poem falsely called "The Auguries of Innocence"—

He will not find anything objectionable in that, at any rate; probably he will bow his head slightly to a truism, as if he were in church. Then he will read the next two lines—

And there the modern man will sit down suddenly on the sofa and come finally to the conclusion that William Blake was mad and nothing else.

But those last two lines express all that is best in Blake and all that is best in all the tradition of the mystics. Those two lines 147