Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/166

 AMERICA.

It was an opinion of Swedenborg that in the Bible the historic books while dealing with facts which occurred, treated them as symbols, as though they had been fable or parable without foundation in fact. Read in this manner these books belonged in their essence to prophecy. Thus the whole of the Scriptures could be classed under the two headings used in the Bible itself,—the Law, and the Prophets.

Blake, weaving historical incidents and names into mystical poetry, did so under the belief that he was following the highest example, and that "prophecy" was the right term for literature so conceived. The book of "America" is, perhaps, the most conspicuous example of this method in his writings.

The preludium tells, under the guise of symbolic myth, that it is the business of the natural rebellion of ordinary fleshly passion to typify the throwing aside of Reason's chilling restraint by imaginative inspiration. The poem points to the American War of Independence as another image under which the same doctrine may be learned.

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Each of our passions has three very distinct forms, or characteristics. Orc is the nobler form of Desire. He is