Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/279

 Rh portion of mind, "Lambeth," glows with aspiration, though it has been so long given over to demonstration and the sacrifice of mind to body (" oak groves " and " druid temples"). All things, he says, are contained within man, " Albion," although he be now given over to demonstration (become "rocky").

P. 4, l. 27, to p. 5, l. 14. When the spectral forms of life have been burnt in the mental furnace the emotional side of the eternal mind weaves them into affections and soft moods. The masculine side makes out of materialistic faculties which are too individual to become ashes, the force of the mind, " the sinews of life." The result of this double labour is to make the three classes, the elect, those who are wholly given over to reason and its god " the redeemed," those in whom imagina- tion struggles with reason, "the reprobates/' those who sin against law whether for selfish or for high motives, while mental space weaves their affections together. Corporeal space, "Targum," drags their emotion into purely physical life or into mere length and breadth, and separates them one from another, that they may be destructive of each other's existence. The regions of the mind where these three classes dwell, are symbolized by Western and Eastern portions of London to show that they are all three confined, the first willingly, the last unwillingly in "length and bread the" Blake bids the reader consider his scheme of expression or "follow his plough."

P. 5, ll. 5 to 17. After this warning Blake begins the true action of the poem by describing Satan the opaque non-imaginative, who belongs to the first class. He pities imaginative emotion, Palamabron, and wishes to give it rest by taking its place, that is to say rule and method; and the generalizing, analytical and formal allegories of classic models or nature, each to do the work of imaginative impulse, as Hayley tried to help Blake, regulating both his art and his life for him. The creative mind permits him to do so, wearied out by his repeated offers.