Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/210

196 Verse I. The senses and instincts (north and west of London) were the supports of imagination (builded over with Jerusalem's golden pillars). II. They are regions of mental happiness and love. III. And of rest. IV. And of innocence (boys who bathe, and cattle who browse). The triad Love, Innocence, Repose, completes the earliest stage of a prose Humanity (or London) of these Regions. It is the stage before creation and its delusions have come to change the Head — Heart — Loins. V. Childhood, as the period of Paradise of the Mind, is again emphasized. VI. Innocence is identified with forgiveness : Law with pride, and punishment. VII. In the seventh stanza a manifestation (as the number leads us to expect) occurs of the eternity of the work of the golden builders. They are busy in the moist region of instinct, — the tongue, the west, (Paddington) ever weeping, for growth is sad, — even after Satan's first victory (won by forcing instinct to serve demonstration, not inspiration, as in the story of Genesis when the fruit of the tree of knowledge enters the mouth of woman). VIII. With the consequence that the Druids, once inspired, became deluded and passed from mental to personal sacrifice. IX. In the ninth stanza the birth-groan is heard and the shaking, or throes of birthgiving, are seen on the Atlantic Mountains, — the land between East and West. X. Albion's Spectre is named as the offspring so born. It tears forth from his loins, though it is a delusion, — the memory-in-reason of his head, for he has fallen and his head is in his loins. XI. This Spectre is that described in detail when considered in its various divisions as the Twelve "spectre sons" — and Jerusalem who was in the first book drawn Eastward in Maternal Anguish, is so drawn here. She falls through the East of London to the East of English coast. XII. Three Rivers of Europe and Asia, named in succession, one more Eastern than another, rolled red, for Rivers are happinesses, and when Emanative imagination falls into the East (heart, selfish centre), happiness is sought in the region of blood, in physical passions. XIII. Albion's spectre, — the