Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/151

Rh "fury" into "clouds of blood" to symbolize the making into emotional life of the self-hood, through its contest with its opposite universal existence.

V. 3, l. 8. — A harmony of all forms of life had existed in eternity. When the self-hood is separated, away from it, he takes with him but fragments of life, being himself a fragment. The mere contractive and. repellent forms symbolized by the " frowning cliffs " remain with him.

V. 8, l. 1. — The dark globe is, among other things, the globe of the earth; globes are always self -hoods in their most elementary form of centres of attraction, hence Blake considered the world of reality and unimagination to be flat, thus viewed as the mere nether limit for the feet of spirits. When Urizen formed this cave-like opacity about him, he entered the womb of nature, from which he is born as man's reason in the last, chapter.

C. 3, v. 1. l. 2. — " A clod of clay " is the term constantly applied to the beginning of material life in the womb.

V. 2, 3-V. 2, 3. — Pitch, nitre and sulphur are an alchemical first triad referring to earth, air, and fire, respectively. Blake uses them here to express a triple agony of the intellectual, moral and emotional faculties, or of the head, heart and loins.

C. 4, v. 4, l. 7.— "Iron," head; " breast," loins.

V. 6-11. — The order of the states: "bones," "heart," "eyes," "ears," "nostrils," and " tongue," is an epitome of the book from Chapter IV. to the end. The making of bones is analogous to the whole process of fixing the states. The making the heart to birth of Enitharmon, who issues from the breast of Los as a globe of blood in Chapter V. The eyes having a correspondence to the union of Los and Enitharmon to produce Ore in Chapter VI. Eyes being always connected with marriage in the sense of a union of the mental states, and the "spaces" of outer nature. The ears, the first faculty of the last triad, are analogous to the chaining of Ore, the entrance of the logos into the darkness of physical life. The nostrils refer to the air or free spiritual essence entering Ulro