Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/289

 Rh P. 11, ll. 36 to 44. The purely mental emotions now no longer war on the bodily, but lead the bodily emotions into the presence of the creative energy of the mind, and from the bodily attraction and the inventive energy are born the organization of the corporeal mental condition. Death, the recurring period of unimaginativeness, is made, that death may be separate, a part to be learned and refused, and the bodily restriction is given a place apart and called Rahab, that she may be known as other than Jerusalem, and so cast out when the time comes. Oothoon, spiritual beauty, is made the guard of heathen corporeal beauty to protect it from the destroyer, force of reason. (Palamabron, though he is the inventive mental personality in general, is, in a special sense, the writer in Blake himself, his harrow being the pen. Oothoon is the spiritual beauty whereby Blake seeks to win the corporeal beauty and fascination of merely natural things.)

P. 11, l. 45 to 50. Having been told the stages whereby the personal Blake was made, and the personal method of his philosophy invented, the history of thought and life carried on from the creation to modern times, the poet in Albion ceases to speak for a moment, or from being creative becomes possible. Some say that Pity — corporeal creation— Love, or Leutha, are too high to be charged with this guilt of unimaginativeness. Others say his words are true, and ask where he had his song.

P. 12, ll. 12 to 19. He replies that he knows it is truth because he speaks from the poetic genius which is good. The bard takes refuge in Milton — Religious poetry — from the confusion of many speculations caused by his revelation.

This "refuge" in Milton's bosom is a symbol occurring elsewhere. Later on, we find it revealed as "repentance," p. 19, l. 50, and the symbol of nature's and analogy's period, six thousand years, enables us to trace it once more in "Vala," Night VII., l. 395, where it appears as "self-denial and bitter contrition," and Los is found as larger than the symbol Milton, for only a portion of him goes to eternal death.

VOL. II. 18 *