Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/48

34 The Mental Traveller is at the same time a sun-myth and a stoiy of the Incarnation. It is also a vision of Time and Space, Love and morality, Imagination and materialism. Like all the sexual symbols it covers three meanings and implies (lie "form' of a fourth. It will bear a separate interpretation from the point of view of each Zoa, a Urizen interpretation, an interpretation for Luvah, for Tharmas, and for Urthona.

It will not be difficult for the reader to whom Blake's symbolism is no longer a mystery and a confusion, to trace these meanings. As in most other obscure passages, Blake in this poem gives us many a hint where to look for the pages of parallel narrative in the Prophetic Books that throw light on its meaning. The hints are to be found sometimes in the picture suggested, and sometimes in catch-words or technical symbolic terms whose idea is not elaborated here, but elsewhere.

The land where the Mental Traveller journeys is within us. The men and women are "affections, children of our thoughts, walking within our blood-vessels." ("Jerusalem," p. 38, l. 33.) One of the numerous water-colour illustrations to Young's " Night Thoughts " in Mr. Bain's volume represents Luvah and Vala in the act of" going down the Human Heart." The male and female persons of this poem are, among others, Luvah and Vala.

In this land are "breeding women, walking in pride, bringing forth under green trees, with pleasure, without pain, for their food is blood of the captive " (" Jerusalem," p. 68, l. 37).

If the babe is a mental emotion, an infant joy showing the Human Form, he is given to the Nameless Shadowy Female who, in her ancient form, unites the attributes of Rahab, Tirzah, Guendolen, Enion, Vala, and all the others. She is, in fact, the Mundane Shell, Love, being "brought into light of day in pride of chaste beauty" ("Jerusalem," p. 22, l. 17).