Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/24

10 much as he who is outwardly dark. Compare "Jerusalem," p. 14, l. 34, and "Vala," Night IV., l. 255, where the daughters of Beulah — the mild emotions of the bodily regions — speak, and explain in the same manner as this song the "garments of Luvah," as the "cloud" or mortal blood is there called.

In the "Little Boy Lost" symbolic vision is again as evident as in any of the Prophetic Books. Here the "Little Boy" is lost, for a while, because the movement of the Light, as the "Father," is too swift for the mind clogged with body to follow. He does not at best see the Father otherwise than as a vapour, and even this flies from him, and leaves him in the darkness of fleshly growth, which becomes increasingly "opaque," — to use Blake's later term. The region of the darkened West, the shadowy Female, is indicated by the signs night, and dew, as the Adamic Red Earth is by the mire.

In the "Little Boy Found," the flying vapour is separated from the Father and shown to be, — when alone, — only tin fen-light, "wandering," — the "false morning," as it is after- wards called in "Vala." God appears in the Human form, which, to the little boy, seems that of his father and leads him to his mother. Mnetha has become Enion, who loses her own children in her own element. The Father gives back to her those who are not advanced enough to leave her, for until the experience of the lower nature, or senses, is completely matured, the higher should not be permitted to separate, lest empty abstraction, and the solitude of the Spectre in Entuthon Benython and Udan Adan, be the result, and not the ultimate unity only to be reached through experience and brotherhood.

In the next song but one, the "Divine Image," or "Similitude," is described, — that which he "ceases to exist" who "ceases to behold" ("Jerusalem," p. 38, 1. 12).

It is this Vision against which "Self-Righteousness" hardens itself "conglomerating" ("Jerusalem," p. 13, 1. 52).

In the song called "Night," all the terms are used in symbolic sense, as in the prophetic books. It relates th