Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/37

 Rh ::"Imputing Siu and Righteousness to Individuals, Rahab
 * Sat deep within him hid, his Feminine Power unrevealed,
 * Brooding abstract philosophy to destroy Imagination the Divine —
 * Humanity : a Three-fold Wonder ; feminine, most beautiful ; Three-fold
 * Each within the other. On her white marble and even neck, her heart
 * In-orbed and bonified with locks of shadowing modesty, shining
 * Beams mild, all love and all perfection, that when the lips
 * Receive a kiss from gods or men, a threefold kiss returns
 * From the pressed loveliness ; so her whole immortal form threefold,
 * Threefold embrace returns, consuming lives of gods and men
 * In fires of beauty, melting them as gold and silver in the furnace.
 * Her brain enlabyrinths the whole heaven of her bosom and loins,
 * To put in act what her heart wills. Oh, who can withstand her power ?
 * Her name is Vala in Eternity. In time her name is Rahab."

She is, in fact, the mass of meanings (most of which are brought together for reference in the chapter on the Symbol of the Worm), that terrible being to whom Job said, "Thou art my mother.'"

In "Lafayette" the King of France and the Queen are not without points of affinity with the satanic aspects of Luvah and Yala — in which they are doiug the work of Urizen-in- North and Rahab. Their positions are not sufficiently developed in these few verses to make it possible to give them their exact place in the great myth, but that they are modern names applied, on a hint given by passing events, to the great groups of the States is evident. They both belong to the destructive. They contain the first elements of the ideas afterwards developed in the part of the "Song of Los" called Asia, where


 * "The Kings of Asia stood
 * And cried in bitterness of soul,
 * Shall not the King call for famine from the heath
 * And the priest for pestilence from the fen
 * To restrain, to dismay, to thin
 * The inhabitants of mountain and plain
 * In the day of full feeding prosperity
 * And the night of delicious songs ?
 * To restrain the child from the womb.
 * That the pride of the heart may fail,
 * That the lust of the eyes may be quenched,
 * That the delicate ear in its infancy
 * May be dulled, and the nostrils closed up."
 * That the delicate ear in its infancy
 * May be dulled, and the nostrils closed up."