Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/41

 Rh This was re-written with stone for steps, and it went on —


 * "Who will exchange his own heart's blood
 * For the drops of a harlot's eye ? "

But this was pei'haps too historic and not sufficiently joined by symbolic terms to widen meaning. It was crossed out. So were the following :


 * "Will the mother exchange her new-born babe
 * For the dog at the wintry door ?
 * Yet thou dost exchange thy pitying tears
 * For the links of a dungeon floor.
 * Fayette, Fayette, thou 'rt bought and sold,
 * And sold is thy happy morrow.
 * Thou gavest the tears of pity away
 * In exchange for the tears of sorrow."

His dungeon was the net of Urizen, for the next lines are —


 * "Fayette beheld the King and Queen
 * In tears of iron bound,
 * But mute Fayette wept tear for tear
 * And guarded them around."

The final intention, to judge by the Nos. 1 and 2 written against these two stanzas, seems to have been that they should be the whole poem, and all the rest should be thrown away as not pointed enough. Unfortunately, the word " tears " was exchanged for " curses," in a doubtful moment, and the symbolic value spoiled.

These verses were written after the "Songs of Innocence," and probably before those of "Experience"; certainly before the "Everlasting Gospel," as their position in the MS. Book shows. The " Songs of Experience" were engraved in 1794, and probably written for the most part in 1793. Lafayette was arrested and imprisoned in the fortress of Olmutz, in Moravia, in 1792. Blake may have written after this incident to give expression to the idea that his real imprisonment dated from his sympathy with the "tears of iron" in which the King was bound. These were "chains of the mind," for " a tear is an intellectual thing."