Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/207

 Rh Self-hood is still his god — (or Satan, opposite of Humanity, or Imagination, or Jesus). Yet lie feels the truth of the unity of the regions in the inward or upper sphere of Jerusalem. He confesses his sin — his personal belief in punishment.

P. 23, 11. 29 to 40. — Then suddenly, with the repulsion of pride from the conviction of error, Albion recoiled from his own perception of truth. He had fled inward to his darkened centre (see above, in the reference to Jerusalem, p. 19, 1. 36) ; and now he goes to his closed circumference, which is itself the veil. He cannot break through it again. He carries it with him. He, by force of self-hood, of Envy, Revenge, Cruelty, turns Virginity into Morality, Innocence to Self-righteousness. The veil of Vala becomes of evil impoi't, and its qualities are embodied in cruel laws, not loving praises. He casts it into the Atlantic, region of male potency to catch the souls, desires, of the dead, the people of unimaginative dogma. From caverns of Derbyshire (see chart of counties under Brereton, West, Tharraas), and Wales, of the same region, and Scotland, the North, the region of iron and experienced love, he spoke. He says that the snows of mortality cover the dying limbs of his humanity or imaginations, and that if this is anything but an illusion he calls on the God of Ulro — the spirit of self-hood — to take vengeance on it, and to draw it down into the ab3'ss of torture, the place of past, present, future, in which he is forced to dwell, where innocence is no delight, as it is in imagination, for it takes the face of legality and wields the rod of punishment. But in spite of his cry — which is a demand for the Incarnation and Redemption — death and annihilation are not the same to the self-hood — death being error, while self-annihilation is Eternity.

P. 24, 1. 12. — Instantly he sees that his words will take effect. They recoil on him in the blood of the Lamb slain, that is of imaginative significance killed by being mistaken for corporeal command. He tells of Druid days — love brought

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