Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/49

 Rh He is bound on a rock which is a rock of blood (" Jerusalem," p. 83, l. 56) that becomes opaque hardness, covering all vegetated things ("Jerusalem," p. 67, l. 5). The feminine nature drinks up the affections, symbolized as sons of Jerusalem, Dan and Gad (ibid. l. 22). These affections are, indeed, the Human Form, Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love being its Regions, now bound, or nailed, down to the rock ("Jerusalem " p. 67, l. 44), or stems of vegetation ("Jerusalem," p. 67, l. 44, to p. 68, 1. 9).

This catching of the shrieks in cups is one of the sports of amorous play among those in the wine-press of Luvah who are the human forms of weeds, — so identified are the Rock, Blood, Female, Vegetable (" Vala," Night IX., 1. 768, and "Milton," p. 24, 1. 38). All this belongs also to war (name of the wine-press), enemy of art, and therefore of Man. It belongs to the separation of the Masculine from the Feminine, and both from Man ("Jerusalem," p. 90, l. 14). When the knife cuts the head it is denial (" Jerusalem," p. 67, l. 24). It cuts off eternity in those who submit to it under the Epicurean Philosophy of Albion's Tree ("Jerusalem," p. 67, l. 13). When it cuts the heart it is love refused in cruelties of holiness that takes the flesh from the victim and examines the infant's limbs ("Jerusalem," p. 68,1. 57). Thus the Woman Old acts to the Infant Joy, as Albion and as Tharmas when in the moral state of morbidity and error (" Jerusalem," p. 22, l. 20, and "Vala," Night L, 1. 46).

These show who the child on the rock is. But the woman becomes young-, and the child old, by the law that a punisher mingles with his victim's spectre (" Jerusalem," l. 14).

When the result is that both are. of one age, then they change parts, and he turns to Ore at the moment when Ore set himself free and conquered the Nameless Shadowy Female. As he grows old the wealth of his soul consists of the accumulation of his own smiles and tears. But he is male, and mental, and these things make the joy of others, when VOL. II.