And of that God from whom all things are given;
Who in mysterious Sinai's awful cave
To Man the wondrous art of writing gave;
Again he speaks in thunder and in fire,
Thunder of thought and flames of fierce desire;
Even from the depths of Hell his voice I hear
Within the unfathomed caverns of my ear;
Therefore I print; nor vain my types shall be;
Heaven, Earth, and Hell henceforth shall live in harmony."
"We who dwell on earth," adds the prophet, speaking of the measure and
outward fashion of his poem, "can do nothing of ourselves; everything is
conducted by Spirits no less than digestion or sleep." It is to be wished
then that the spirits had on this occasion spoken less like somnambulists
and uttered less indigested verse. For metrical oratory the plea that
follows against ordinary metre may be allowed to have some effective
significance; however futile if applied to purer and more essential forms
of poetry.
It will be enough to understand well and bear well in mind once for all
that the gist of this poem, regarded either as a scheme of ethics or as a
mythological evangel, is simply this: to preach, as in the Saviour's
opening invocation, the union of man with God:--("I am not a God afar
off;--Lo! we are One; forgiving all evil; not seeking recompense"): to
confute the dull mournful insanity of disbelief which compels "the
perturbed man" to avert his ear and reject the divine counsellor as a
"Phantom of the over-heated brain." This perverted humanity is incarnate
in Albion, the fallen Titan, imprisoned by his children; the "sons of
Albion" are daemonic qualities of force and faith, the "daughters" are
reflex qualities or conditions which emanate from these. As thus; reason
supplants faith, and law, moral or religious, grows out of reason;
Jerusalem, symbol of imaginative liberty, emanation of his unfallen days,
is the faith cast out by the "sons" or spirits who substitute reason for
faith, the freedom trodden under by the "daughters" who substitute moral
law for moral impulse: "Vala," her Spectre, called "Tirzah" among men, is
the personified form in which "Jerusalem" becomes revealed, the perverted
incarnation, the wrested medium or condition in which she exists among
men. Thus much for the scheme of allegory with which the prophet sets out;
but when once he has got his theogony well under way and thrown it well
into types, the antitypes all but vanish: every condition or quality has a
god or goddess of its own; every obscure state and allegorical gradation
becomes a personal agent: and all these fierce dim figures threaten and
complain, mingle and divide, struggle and embrace as human friends or
foes. The main symbols are even of a monotonous consistency; but no
accurate sequence of symbolic detail is to be looked for in the doings and
sayings of these contending giants and gods. To those who will remember
this distinction and will make allowance for the peculiar dialect and
manner of which some account has already been taken, this poem will not
seem so wholly devoid of reason or of charm.
For its great qualities are much the same in text as in design: plenteous,
delicate, vigorous. There is a certain real if rough and lax power of
dramatic insight and invention shown even in the singular divisions of
adverse symbol against symbol; in such allegories as that which opposes
the "human imagination in which all things exist"--do actually exist to
all eternity--and the reflex fancy or belief which men confound with this;
nay, which they prefer to dwell in and ask comfort from. These two the
poet calls the "states" of Beulah and Jerusalem. As the souls of men are
attracted towards that "mild heaven" of dreams and shadows where only the
reflected image of their own hopes and errors can abide, the imagination,
most divine and human, most actual and absolute, of all things, recedes
ever further and further among the clouds of smoke, vapours of "abstract
philosophy," and is caught among the "starry wheels" of religion and law,
whose restless and magnetic revolution attracts and absorbs her.
"O what avail the loves and tears of Beulah's lovely daughters?
They hold the immortal form in gentle bands and tender tears,
But all within is opened into the deeps"--
the deeps of "a dark and unknown night" in which "philosophy wars against
imagination." Here also the main myth of the _Europe_ is once more
rehandled; to "create a female will," jealous, curious, cunning, full of
tender tyranny and confusion, this is "to hide the most evident God in a
hidden covert, even in the shadows of a woman and a secluded holy place,
that we may pry after him as after a stolen treasure, hidden among the
dead and mured up from the paths of life." Thus is it with the Titan
Albion and all his race of mythologic men, when for them "Vala supplants
Jerusalem," the husk replaces the fruit, the mutable form eclipses the
immutable substance.
But into these darker parts of the book we will not go too deep. Time,
patience, and insight on the part of writer and reader might perhaps clear
up all details and lay bare much worth sight and study; but only at the
expense of much labour and space. It is feasible, and would be worth
doing; but not here. If the singular amalgam called Blake's works should
ever get published, and edited to any purpose, this will have to be done
by an energetic editor with time enough on his hands and wits enough for
the work. We meantime will gather up a few strays that even under these
circumstances appear worth hiving. In the address (p. 27) to the Jews,
&c., Blake affirms that "Britain was the primitive seat of the patriarchal
religion": therefore, in a literal as well as in a mystical sense,
Jerusalem was the emanation of the giant Albion. (This it should seem was,
according to the mythology, before the visible world was created; in the
time when all things were in the divine undivided world of the gods.) "Ye
are united, O ye inhabitants of Earth, in one Religion: the most Ancient,
the Eternal, and the Everlasting Gospel. The Wicked will turn it to
Wickedness; the Righteous, to Righteousness." If there be truth in the
Jewish tradition, he adds further on, that man anciently contained in his
mighty limbs all things in heaven and earth, "and they were separated from
him by cruel sacrifices; and when compulsory cruel sacrifices had brought
Humanity into a feminine tabernacle in the loins of Abraham and David, the
Lamb of God, the Saviour, became apparent on earth as the prophets had
foretold: the return of Israel is a return to mental sacrifice and war,"
to noble spiritual freedom and labour, which alone can supplant "corporeal
war" and violence of error.
The second address (p. 52) "to the Deists" is more singular and more
eloquent. Take a few extracts given not quite at random. "He," says Blake,
"who preaches natural religion or morality is a flatterer who means to
betray, and to perpetuate tyrant pride and the laws of that Babylon which
he foresees shall shortly be destroyed with the spiritual and not the
natural sword; he is in the state named Rahab." The prophet then enforces
his law that "man is born a spectre or Satan and is altogether an Evil,"
and "must continually be changed into his direct contrary." Those who
persuade him otherwise are his enemies. For "man must and will have some
religion; if he has not the religion of Jesus he will have the religion of
Satan." Again, "Will any one say, Where are those who worship Satan under
the name of God?--where are they? Listen. Every religion that preaches
vengeance for sin is the religion of the enemy and avenger, and not of the
forgiver of sin: and their God is Satan named by the Divine Name." This,
he says, must be at root the religion of all who deny revelation and adore
nature;[64] for mere nature is Satanic. Adam the first man was created at
the same time with Satan, when the earth-giant Albion was cast into a
trance of sleep: the first man was a part of the universal fluent nature
made opaque; the first fiend, a part contracted; and only by these
qualities of opacity and contraction can man or devil have separate
natural existence. Those, the prophet adds in his perverse manner, who
profess belief in natural virtue are hypocrites; which those cannot be who
"pretend to be holier than others, but confess their sins before all the
world." _Therefore_ there was never a religious hypocrite! "Rousseau
thought men good by nature; he found them evil, and found no friend.
Friendship cannot exist without forgiveness of sins continually." And so
forth.
At p. 66 is a passage recalling the myth of the "Mental Traveller," and
which seems to bear out the interpretation we gave to that misty and
tempestuous poem. This part of the prophecy, describing the blind pitiful
cruelty of divided qualities set against each other, is full of brilliant
and noble passages. Even the faint symbolic shapes of Tirzah and all her
kind assume now and then a splendour of pathos, utter words of stately
sound, complain and appeal even to some recognizable purpose. So much
might here be cited that we will prefer to cite nothing but this slight
touch of myth. In the world of time "they refuse liberty to the male: not
like Beulah,
Where every female delights to give her maiden to her husband."
The female searches sea and land for gratification to the male genius, who
in return clothes her in gems and gold and feeds her with the food of
Eden: hence all her beauty beams. But this is only in the "land of
dreams," where dwell things "stolen from the human imagination by secret
amorous theft:" and when the spectres of the dead awake in that land, "all
the jealousies become murderous:--forming a commerce to sell loves with
moral law; an equal balance, not going down with decision:
therefore--mutual hate returns and mutual deceit and mutual fear." In
fact, the divorce batteries are here open again.
The third address "to the Christians" is too long to transcribe here; and
should in fairness have been given in the biography. Its devout passion
and beauty of words might have won notice, and earned tolerance for the
more erratic matter in which it lies embedded. "What is the joy of heaven
but improvement in the things of the spirit? What are the pains of hell
but ignorance, bodily lust, idleness, and devastation of the things of the
spirit?" Mental gifts, given of Christ, "always appear to the
ignorance-loving hypocrite as sins; but that which is a sin in the sight
of cruel man is not so in the sight of our kind God." Every Christian
after his ability should openly engage in some mental pursuit; for "to
labour in knowledge is to build up Jerusalem; and to despise knowledge is
to despise Jerusalem and her builders." A little before he has said: "I
know of no other Christianity and no other Gospel than the liberty both of
body and mind to exercise the divine arts of imagination." God being a
spirit, and to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, are not all his gifts
spiritual gifts? "The Christians then must give up the religion of
Caiaphas, the dark preacher of death, of sin, of sorrow, and of
punishment, typified as a revolving wheel, a devouring sword; and
recognize that the labours of Art and Science alone are the labours of the
Gospel." As to religion, "Jesus died because he strove against the current
of this wheel--opposing nature; it is natural religion. But Jesus is the
bright preacher of life, creating nature from this fiery law, by
self-denial and forgiveness of sin." So speaks to the prophet "a Watcher
and a Holy One;" bidding him
"Go therefore, cast out devils in Christ's name,
Heal thou the sick of spiritual disease;
Pity the evil; for thou art not sent
To smite with terror and with punishments
Those that are sick. * * * *
But to the publicans and harlots go:
Teach them true happiness; but let no curse
Go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace.
For hell is opened to heaven; thine eyes behold
The dungeons burst, the prisoners set free.
England, awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy sister calls;
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death
And chase her from thy ancient walls?
Thy hills and valleys felt her feet
Gently upon their bosoms move;
Thy gates beheld sweet Zion's ways;
Then was a time of joy and love.
And now the time returns again;
Our souls exult; and London's towers
Receive the Lamb of God to dwell
In England's green and pleasant bowers."
Much might also be said, had one leave of time, of the last chapter; of
the death of the earth-giant through jealousy, and his resurrection when
the Saviour appeared to him revealed in the likeness and similitude of
Time: of the ultimate deliverance of all things, chanted in a psalm of
high and tidal melody; a resurrection wherein all things, even "Tree,
Metal, Earth and Stone," become all
"Human forms identified; living, going forth, and returning wearied
Into the planetary lives of years, months, days, and hours: reposing
And then awaking into his bosom in the life of immortality.
And I heard the name of their emanations: they are named Jerusalem."
We will add one reference, to pp. 61-62, where God shows to Jerusalem in a
vision "Joseph the carpenter in Nazareth, and Mary his espoused wife."
Through the vision of their story the forgiveness of Jerusalem also, when
she has gone astray from her Lord, is made manifest to her.
"And I heard a voice among the reapers saying, 'Am I Jerusalem the lost
adulteress? or am I Babylon come up to Jerusalem?' And another voice
answered saying, 'Does the voice of my Lord call me again? am I pure
through his mercy and pity? am I become lovely as a virgin in his sight,
who am indeed a harlot drunken with the sacrifice of idols?--O mercy, O
divine humanity, O forgiveness and pity and compassion, if I were pure I
should never have known thee: if I were unpolluted I should never have
glorified thy holiness, or rejoiced in thy great salvation.'" The whole
passage--and such are not so unfrequent as at first glimpse they seem--is,
if seen with equal eyes, whether its purport be right or wrong, "full of
wisdom and perfect in beauty." But we will dive after no more pearls at
present in this huge oyster-bed; and of the illustrations we can but speak
in a rough swift way. These are all generally noble: that at p. 70 is
great among the greatest of Blake's. Spires of serpentine cloud are seen
before a strong wind below a crescent moon; Druid pillars enclose as with
a frame this stormy division of sky; outside them again the vapour twists
and thickens; and men standing on desolate broken ground look heavenward
or earthward between the pillars. Of others a brief and admirable account
is given in the _Life_, more final and sufficient than we can again give;
but all in fact should be well seen into by those who would judge fitly of
Blake's singular and supreme gift for purely imaginative work. Flowers
sprung of earth and lit from heaven, with chalices of floral fire and with
flower-like women or men growing up out of their centre; fair large forms
full of labour or of rest; sudden starry strands and reaches of
breathless heaven washed by drifts of rapid wind and cloud; serrated array
of iron rocks and glorious growth of weedy lands or flowering fields;
reflected light of bows bent and arrows drawn in heaven, dividing cloud
from starlit cloud; stately shapes of infinite sorrow or exuberant joy;
all beautiful things and all things terrible, all changes of shadow and of
light, all mysteries of the darkness and the day, find place and likeness
here: deep waters made glad and sad with heavy light that comes and goes;
vast expansion of star-shaped blossom and swift aspiration of laborious
flame; strong and sweet figures made subject to strange torture in dim
lands of bondage; mystic emblems of plumeless bird and semi-human beast;
women like the daughters of giants, with immense shapeliness and vigour of
lithe large limbs, clothed about with anguish and crowned upon with
triumph; their deep bosoms pressed against the scales of strong dragons,
their bodies and faces strained together in the delight of monstrous
caresses; similitudes of all between angel and reptile that divide
illimitable spaces of air or defile the overlaboured furrows upon earth.
It is easier to do complete justice to the minor prophecies than to give
any not inadequate conception of this great book, so vast in reach, so
repellent in style, so rich, vehement, and subtle beyond all other works
of Blake; the chosen crown and treasured fruit of his strange labours.
Extracts of admirable beauty might be gathered up on all hands, more
eligible it may be than any here given; none I think more serviceable by
way of sample and exposition, as far as such can at all be attained. That
the book contains much of a personal kind referring in a wild dim manner
to his own spiritual actions and passions, is evident: but even by the new
light of the Felpham correspondence one can hardly see where to lay finger
on these passages and separate them decisively from the loose floating
context. Not without regret, yet not with any sense of wilful or scornful
oversight, we must be content now to pass on, and put up with this
insufficient notice.
The only other engraved work of a prophetic kind did not appear for
eighteen years more. This last and least in size, but not in worth, of the
whole set is so brief that it may here be read in full.
THE GHOST OF ABEL.
A REVELATION IN THE VISIONS OF JEHOVAH.
SEEN BY WILLIAM BLAKE.
To Lord Byron in the Wilderness.--What dost thou here, Elijah?
Can a Poet doubt the Visions of Jehovah? Nature has no Outline:
But Imagination has. Nature has no Time; but Imagination has.
Nature has no Supernatural, and dissolves; Imagination is Eternity.
SCENE.--_A rocky Country._ EVE _fainted over the dead body of_ ABEL
_which lays near a grave_. ADAM _kneels by her_. JEHOVAH _stands
above_.
JEHOVAH. Adam!
ADAM. It is in vain: I will not hear thee more, thou Spiritual Voice.
Is this Death?
JEHOVAH. Adam!
ADAM. It is in vain; I will not hear thee
Henceforth. Is this thy Promise that the Woman's Seed
Should bruise the Serpent's Head? Is this the Serpent? Ah!
Seven times, O Eve, thou hast fainted over the Dead. Ah! Ah!
(EVE _revives_.)
EVE. Is this the Promise of Jehovah? O it is all a vain delusion,
This Death and this Life and this Jehovah.
JEHOVAH. Woman, lift thine eyes.
(A VOICE _is heard coming on_.)
VOICE. O Earth, cover not thou my blood! cover not thou my blood!
(_Enter the_ GHOST of ABEL.)
EVE. Thou visionary Phantasm, thou art not the real Abel.
ABEL. Among the Elohim a Human Victim I wander: I am their House,
Prince of the Air, and our dimensions compass Zenith and Nadir.
Vain is thy Covenant, O Jehovah: I am the Accuser and Avenger
Of Blood; O Earth, cover not thou the blood of Abel.
JEHOVAH. What vengeance dost thou require?
ABEL. Life for Life! Life for Life!
JEHOVAH. He who shall take Cain's life must also die, O Abel;
And who is he? Adam, wilt thou, or Eve, thou, do this?
ADAM. It is all a vain delusion of the all-creative Imagination.
Eve, come away, and let us not believe these vain delusions.
Abel is dead, and Cain slew him; We shall also die a death
And then--what then? be as poor Abel, a Thought; or as
This? O what shall I call thee, Form Divine, Father of Mercies,
That appearest to my Spiritual Vision? Eve, seest thou also?
EVE. I see him plainly with my mind's eye: I see also Abel living;
Tho' terribly afflicted, as we also are: yet Jehovah sees him
Alive and not dead; were it not better to believe Vision
With all our might and strength, tho' we are fallen and lost?
ADAM. Eve, thou hast spoken truly; let us kneel before his feet.
(_They kneel before_ JEHOVAH.)
ABEL. Are these the sacrifices of Eternity, O Jehovah? a broken
spirit
And a contrite heart? O, I cannot forgive; the Accuser hath
Entered into me as into his house, and I loathe thy Tabernacles.
As thou hast said so is it come to pass: My desire is unto Cain
And he doth rule over me: therefore my soul in fumes of blood
Cries for vengeance: Sacrifice on Sacrifice, Blood on Blood.
JEHOVAH. Lo, I have given you a Lamb for an Atonement instead
Of the Transgressor, or no Flesh or Spirit could ever live.
ABEL. Compelled I cry, O Earth, cover not the blood of Abel.
(ABEL _sinks down into the grave, from which arises_ SATAN _armed in
glittering scales with a crown and a spear_.)
SATAN. I will have human blood and not the blood of bulls or goats,
And no Atonement, O Jehovah; the Elohim live on Sacrifice
Of men: hence I am God of men; thou human, O Jehovah.
By the rock and oak of the Druid, creeping mistletoe and thorn,
Cain's city built with human blood, not blood of bulls and goats,
Thou shalt thyself be sacrificed to me thy God on Calvary.
JEHOVAH. Such is my will--(_Thunders_)--that thou thyself go to
Eternal Death
In self-annihilation, even till Satan self-subdued put off Satan
Into the bottomless abyss whose torment arises for ever and ever.
(_On each side a Chorus of Angels entering sing the following._)
The Elohim of the Heathen swore Vengeance for Sin! Then thou stood'st
Forth, O Elohim Jehovah, in the midst of the darkness of the oath all
clothed
In thy covenant of the forgiveness of Sins. Death, O Holy! is this
Brotherhood?
The Elohim saw their oath eternal fire; they rolled apart trembling
over the
Mercy-Seat, each in his station fixed in the firmament, by Peace,
Brotherhood, and Love.
_The Curtain falls._
(1822. W. Blake's original stereotype was 1788.)
On the skirt of a figure, rapid and "vehemently sweeping," engraved
underneath (recalling that vision of Dion made memorable by one of
Wordsworth's nobler poems) are inscribed these words--"The Voice of Abel's
Blood." The fierce and strenuous flight of this figure is as the motion of
one "whose feet are swift to shed blood," and the dim face is full of
hunger and sorrowful lust after revenge. The decorations are slight but
not ineffective; wrought merely in black and white. This small prose lyric
has a value beyond the value of its occasional beauty and force of form;
it is a brief comprehensible expression of Blake's faith seen from its two
leading sides; belief in vision and belief in mercy. Into the singular
mood of mind which made him inscribe it to the least imaginative of all
serious poets we need by no means strive to enter; but in the trustful
admiration and the loyal goodwill which this quaint inscription seems to
imply, there must be something not merely laughable: as, however rough and
homespun the veil of eccentric speech may seem to us at first, we soon
find it interwoven with threads of such fair and fervent colour as make
the stuff of splendid verse; so, beyond all apparent aberrations of
relaxed thought which offend us at each turn, a purpose not ignoble and a
sense not valueless become manifest to those who will see them.