Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/68

54 "Jerusalem" tells us). Rahab, — the Earth, — Mary, — are three states of the woman taken in adultery. All have female names because they are states of the earth, of the body, that is of the dark and temporary part of mind. This poem is dictated by Blake's spectre to them, but it is the spectre Los, — spectre of the living, not Satan, the ultimate of the spectres of the dead ; — a difference explained in Vala.

After " when the soul slept in beams of light " the following was, therefore, all that remained in the MS. of the poem, as Blake intended to print it.


 * Was Jesus chaste, or did he
 * Give any lessons in chastity ?
 * The Morning blushed fiery red.
 * Mary was found in adulterous bed.
 * Earth groaned beneath, and Heaven above
 * Trembled at discovery of love.
 * Jesus was sitting in Moses' chair.
 * They brought the trembling woman there.
 * Moses commands she be stoned to death.
 * What was the sound of Jesus' breath ?
 * He laid his hand on Moses' law.
 * The ancient heavens in silent awe,
 * Writ with curses from pole to pole,
 * All away began to roll.
 * The Earth trembling and naked lay
 * In secret bed of mortal clay.
 * On Sinai fell the hand Divine,
 * Putting back the bloody shrine,
 * And she heard the breath of God
 * As she heard by Eden's flood.
 * " Good and evil are no more ;
 * Sinai's trumpets cease to roar.
 * Cease, finger of God, to write ;
 * The heavens are not clean in thy sight.
 * Thou art good, and thou alone ;
 * Nor may the sinner cast one stone.
 * To be good only, is to be
 * As God or else a Pharisee.
 * Thou Angel of the Presence Divine,
 * That didst create this body of mine,
 * Wherefore hast thou writ these laws
 * And created Hell's dark jaws ?
 * My presence I will take from thee.
 * A cold leper thou shalt be,