Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/303

 Rh harmless pleasures of the eye — (of sight, which is the "happy" realization of marriage — or Beulah (compare Visions of the Daughters of Albion) — and the lamentation of innocence over self-sacrifice turns to beauty. Here "extra page" 32 was to have come in. It is invaluable as explanation, but needs no comment. Extra page 17 can well be read here as a counterpart.

P. 32, l. 24. And the Divine Voice was heard in all the songs of Beulah, saying, ec When I first saw nature and married it, and in it married you, and I gave it, and you, my whole heart. But nature did not joy in the pleasures of the spirit, but was jealous of them and sought her own sower. It refused to allow corporeal life to be lived on the principle of spiritual life. Then it was Bahab, binding the red cord in the window, — crossing vision with the streak of blood. Therefore I, said the Divine Voice, show you my jealousy. It is seen as the death of Milton, who annihilated himself, which now means that he ceases to love nature, or to feel or claim self-righteousness, and so ceases all personal life. He labours, by this withdrawal from "female loves" or love of self-righteous holiness, to be able to enter into the moral and religious life of the exterior, and so redeem his own contrary, the twenty-seven heavens of Bahab. He praises the jealous and dark god, and gives life to Urizen. At this in fear, nature, who gives to those who ask nothing, places herself at the service of the new religious poet and both are happy. So sang the Divine Voice when Ololon repented for Bahab, and took on her fault, and so the voice of Imagination instructed Blake to sing, not as Milton.

P. 34, l. 7. Thus Beulah sounded " comfortable notes," terror being changed to pity. The reason is given where the first line of this page occurs in " Vala," Night VII., 1. 781. It is because the Divine Voice no longer suffered doubts to rise up from the Shadowy Female, who is the real driver-down of Milton into the Ulro.

P. 34, ll. 8 to 49. The divisions of Ulro and Beulah are ex- ::VOL. II.