Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/196

182 the eyes of man to his own inner life, of imagination, and tolls under many names the strife of his various misguided reasonings and moralities with his truer inspirations and impulses.

P. 5, ll. 27 to 33. — Such misguided powers are the sons of Albion, and they war to destroy enthusiasm and to desolate the city of the sacred inward loves. Four in especial strive in the heart, — the Eastern gate, — to devour the sleeping Humanity of Albion turning Pity, and its Outflowing (or emanative quality), to Rage and Hunger. They are the parents of all temporal moods, — the souls within the soil.

P. 5, ll. 34 to 39. — The Male potency burns, the Female weaves. The names under which they are here divided were known to ancient vision and control in each of us, those vitalities by which even our bodies seem to grow and vegetate.

P. 5, ll. 40 to 52. — These powers being named, and their merging into those that are greatest among them, Jerusalem, we are told, the great inspired love of Albion was dragged along in a cloud (the cloud is both of blood and tears), and dragged away in maternal love toward her children, the lesser affections, into the great smoke of experience and personality.

P. 5, ll. 52 to 64. — With her goesVala, the merely natural affection, and they weep together as they become the victims of abstract philosophy.

P. 5, ll. 65 to 68. — But the spirit of prophetic fire, — Los, — in the bosom of man, heard. He wept. His pity, — or Emanation, — divided as his tears fell. It became attracted to the philosophies (starry wheels) in his heart (east) but in his instinctive region (west) became mere shadow and horror.

P. 6, ll. 1 to 14. — His Spectre, — his reasoning self, driven by the same philosophies, divided from him, stood over him, filled him with censoriousness against fallen humanity (murderous thoughts) and tried to destroy the Human Perfection, the Divine Imaginative power, in Los himself.

But though suffering he laboured and sang, — (conceived and created).

P. 7, ll. 1 to 8. — The Spectre, unable to slay Los, carried on