Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/29

 Rh The Garden of Love develops Proverb 56 from the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell."

The little Vagabond comically proclaims what Blake made his great purpose of mental life, —


 * "Therefore, I print ; nor vain my types shall be,
 * Heaven, Earth, and Hell, henceforth, shall live in harmony."
 * "Jerusalem," p. 3.

In "London" we find the purely literary equivalent for the passage in "Jerusalem," p. 84, ll. 11, 12.

In the "Human Abstract" no reader will now have any difficulty in recognizing Urizen in the North. The myth explains the connection of ideas which gave rise to the poem. But the poem helps to explain the myth.

In "Infant Sorrow," the "fiend hid in a cloud" is the symbol for the natural man, born entirely evil, and needing "continually to be changed into his direct contrary." That this change is not to come till after the troublous experiences of life is the truth that makes the helpless child sulky. The expression " sulk upon the breast," being the same as that used in " Vala," Night I., 1. 178, shows again how often Blake concealed an allusion to the Zoas under the most simple verses. His great myth was never far from the background of his mind.

"Christian Forbearance," taken along with the lines on the same subject in the MS. book, on the errors of friends and foes, and the sentence in "Milton," extra p. 3, on the wisdom ^of expressing anger, is rather of biographical than mystical interest, recalls the O'Neil descent, and shows the struggle of " blood and judgment."

"A Little Boy Lost" is suggestive in its title. The poem is to a certain extent a substitute for that called " The Little Boy Lost," and is in many ways its counterpart.

The fuller version quoted by Mr. Swinburne from the MS. book, shows that the central idea of the poem is the binding of the young imagination by the chain of religious jealousy,