Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/148

 134 While Urizen lies asleep, Los, wedded to Enitharmon, produces desire and binds him to a rock lest lie should contaminate Pity.

Bound to the rock he is in touch with Urizen in his moveless Northern state, and, awake with desire, Urizen moves. He sheds tears that become a second and cold female, who produces, by simply shrinking* up into moralities, the ideas that divide from Urizen's infinity. Her race all die. Enitharmon, enclosed by Los with inspiration, bears a race that live.

The characteristic of this book is, on a supei-ficial review, its use of some favourite terms which belong to the symbolic vocabulary of Jacob Boehmen. These are, in particular, Sulphur, Pitch and Nitre. But the adaptation of them to the myth is Blake's own, as is his use of Boehmen's Quaternary, or Four Divisions, wherever found.

Reference to the other books and to the chapters on the Zoas, the Elements, and the Contraries will supply detailed explanations of much that will show a more subtle symbolism than can be indicated in a rapid analysis of the story of the poem.

There is a secondary, but completely sustained, symbolism in the numbering of the chapters and stanzas.

The number three especially indicates correspondences with hidden things, or ideas overlaid by their symbols as the body of Christ by the rock of Joseph's tomb.

The number is often repeated, that is to say, the three stanzas become six before the darkness is dispelled. This is to indicate the six days of creation, during which God entombed his ideas in that which appeals to the darker, or sense-portion of our imaginations.