Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/181

 Rh mental system. Ah ! mother, do not make this mood into an eternal fact. (20-23.)

But thou dost stamp it with the signet of identity, and the flames that are my children make my shadowy namelessness darker than ever when they grow definite, and leave me. (24-26.) Can the infinite pass into the temporary ? Can flames in truth become infants ? Can they be loved and fed with milk and honey, the sweetness of human and the sweetness of vegetable nourishment ? A smile on an infant's face tells me this can be so, and my complaint is silent.

With this she caused her clouds to enter the region of the loins that experience might become maternal. (26-33.)

The depth of winter came. The loins are essentially, as Winter is, the region of darkness. The north was in its most northern state of identity. Morality and reason triumphed over imagination, flesh over spirit ; war ceased. Spiritual propagation (" war gives life in eternity ") was suspended. This was caused by the descent of the secret child through the eastern gate, which is the same thing viewed from another point as the arising of the nameless shadowy female from the breast of Orc.

The troops of spiritual contest fled to the places of shadows, the loins, where they make their abode during the winter of man's mortal life. (1-5.)

This night and winter time is the triumph of the instinctive, of the feminine, the activity of Enitharmon. It is the repose of the masculine. Los (or Urthona) who had chained Urizen to the sun (see Books of " Los " and " Urizen ") rests from his labour at the furnaces, and Urizen is free of his chain. He is reflected in the north like a meteor. But he is solitary there, he only propagates destruction through grief, and restraint unlike Los, possesses of the moon the loins.

The winds and clouds, during the repose of the fire and light, are invited to awake and sing to the elemental harps. North and South repose, East and West arise and sing. The sons of Urizen, the northern sons, are destructive, and envy