Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/298

284 P. 17, l. 5. And Los frowned, but it was not his true self but the personal spectre in him, the Satan, the accuser, the Urizen, the taskmaster who really opposed Milton.

P. 17, ll. 6 to 14. This Urizen who opposed Milton was the very same whom Milton had praised under the name of Jehovah — thus giving life to his opposer. The red clay of the Adamic man in Milton fills out the image, — for without it Urizen could assume only the appearance of age, not the beauty of even the most false and unforgiving ideal of God-head.

P. 17, ll. 15 to 26. The position of Golgonooza in the fourfold Humanity is explained, and the opposition of Urizen. Afterwards, at p, 32, is a diagram showing how Milton reached Golgonooza between the worlds of Urizen and Luvah and passed to Adam, the elementary Humanity, his best goal and highest ideal, having no power to terminate his mental journey otherwise.

P. 17, ll. 27 to 60. Rahab seeing this endeavours to divert him into entering her world of unideal life, not having Adam, but Satan for the goal of his journey, thus never escaping the rocks of Horeb but taking them with him. Then, indeed, Satan would have been unloosed on Albion. The beauty of Morality, Love, and Flesh in strange juncture allure him. She forms them all.

P. 18, ll. 1 to 6. These lines belong to the above account of Rahab.

P. 18, ll. 7 to 24. But Milton worked on as before. The poetry of his words idealised the dark God of Sinai. The words of his poetry were frozen into the rock itself of the law, the real Human, the symbolic influence inhabited the symbolic region where Blake by prophetic power has perception of him, as though he saw himself through the seven eyes of God.

P. 18, ll. 7 to 25. A fourth Milton,— the "elect" portion already satanic in idea, but continually saved through election and made a redeemer, — by inspiration that astonished and mistook itself — (Milton wrote of the Messiah under the idea