Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/143

Rh beholds as a worm, — and the Eternals began to erect the tent they had woven.

4. But the helplessness lay not instantly organized, as an infant is not born the moment it is conceived.

5. By day, by the light of imagination, it was beheld as an infant. But by night, that is to say, when ib was seen in its dark and mortal aspect, it was no more than a worm. Therefore, day revealed it in air, night in earth, day in the bosom, night in the womb.

6. But as a secondary part of the great law that Time, as a portion of eternity, or prophetic creation, is the Mercy of Eternity ; yet when time acts through generation on blood, or Imagination on Pity, the offspring enters the region of Pain and Poison called by mortals Life, through the gate of its own helplessness. The worm became a serpent. Its hissings revealed its growth. As hot iron hisses quenched in water, so the prophecy of its father became quenched in the pity of its mother, and joined into nature in itself. Then came a cry. Pain followed the quenching. Then with many throes, or many maternities, this birth passed the lower or animal experiences. It was transmitted through the elements by the vehicles of life in each. The fish bore its pain in the sea, the birds in the air, the beasts in the earth, as the serpent had through quenching fire. Finally it took form as infant, Humanity.

7. And in this shape it manifested itself; a gloomy vision to the eyes of the dwellers in imagination.

8. They shrieked ; birth is terror. Their powers were paralyzed, for the shadow of the body is a paralyzing weight on the powers of light in mind.

9. And in the shape so beheld, delving the womb of earth, it issued forth, bringing the flames of its paternity with it, for the child was male.

10. Eternity closed the mental powers in the woven tent of system, that no more prophecy could behold them as before.

VOL. II. 9