Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/295

 Rh labours, in order to lift corporeal into spiritual life. The last thing he takes off when he does this is the covenant of truth. He puts on the twenty-seven heavens instead, — all of them belonging to Rahab, being, as they were poisonous modifications of truth, mixed with realism and moralism (compare "Jerusalem/' pp. 1 to 22). That is to say, when the religious impulse of poetry assumed the form of Milton's works it put on sin, as Christ put on death in the Virgin's womb. — It also, as will presently be seen, put on repentance.

The act may be, and has been, considered as also a passing of the power here called " Milton " from the narrower spiritual life that condemns the bodily life, and entering into that larger form of the same that accepts all. In this secondary sense the girdle and the robe are the "covering" (see chapter on "Christ") of the life and that which holds it together. The covering is the man of tradition, dogma, custom, &c., which any idea or emotion gathers round it in the course of time. It is held together by the resolve of men to serve that idea, hence Milton, God himself in one aspect, has to ungird himself of his oath to himself or to his self -hood, before he can get rid of the mass of religious traditions which make it impossible for him to expand beyond himself." (Now begins again in another aspect that story of the churches which Blake is for ever dwelling upon. Milton, religious impulse, descends and will in time become again tradition and rule.)

P. 12, l. 14 to 32. The states and moods of man are still given to the worship of natural fact and of mere brute force. He will enter into this evil world lest he becomes a self-hood by being separated from his emanative portion. He has constructed but a narrow tradition, and so becomes wholly masculine and repulsive, and must now redeem the feminine and attractive portion. He must leave memory and enter inspiration, which is born of the union of memory (the spectre) and hope (the emanation).

P. 12, ll. 33 to 35. He takes the corporeal journey (the outside course) among the unimaginative (the dew), and the