Part 23

'I saw 'em kindle with desire, While with soft sighs they blew the fire; Saw the approaches of their joy, He growing more fierce and she less coy; Saw how they mingled melting rays, Exchanging love a thousand ways. Kind was the force on every side; Her new desire she could not hide, Nor would the shepherd be denied. The blessed minute he pursued, Till she, transported in his arms, Yields to the conqueror all her charms. His panting breast to hers now joined, They feast on raptures unconfined, Vast and luxuriant; such as prove The immortality of love. For who but a Divinity Could mingle souls to that degree And melt them into ecstasy? Now like the Phoenix both expire, While from the ashes of their fire Springs up a new and soft desire. Like charmers, thrice they did invoke The God, and thrice new vigour took.'--_Behn._

"I was so well pleased with her luck that I thought I would try my own, and opened the following:--

'As when the winds their airy quarrel try, Jostling from every quarter of the sky, This way and that the mountain oak they bear, His boughs they scatter and his branches tear; With leaves and falling mast they spread the ground; The hollow valleys echo to the sound; Unmoved, the royal plant their fury mocks, Or, shaken, clings more closely to the rocks: For as he shoots his towering head on high, So deep in earth his fixed foundations lie.'--_Dryden's Virgil._"

Nothing is ever so cynical as innocence, whether it be a child's or a mystic's. As a poet, Blake had some reason to be "well pleased" with his wife's curious windfall; for those verses of the illustrious Aphra's have some real energy and beauty of form, visible to those who care to make allowance, first for the conventional English of the time, and secondly for the naked violence of manner natural to that she-satyr, whose really great lyrical gifts are hopelessly overlaid and encrusted by the rough repulsive husk of her incredible style of speech. Even "Astraea" must however have fair play and fair praise; and the simple truth is that, when writing her best, this "unmentionable" poetess has a vigorous grace and a noble sense of metre to be found in no other song-writer of her time. One song, fished up by Mr. Dyce out of the weltering sewerage of Aphra's unreadable and unutterable plays, has a splendid quality of verse, and even some degree of sentiment not wholly porcine. Take four lines as a sample, and Blake's implied approval will hardly seem unjustifiable:--

"From thy bright eyes he took those fires Which round about in sport he hurled; But 'twas from mine he took desires Enough to undo the amorous world."

The strong and subtle cadence of that magnificent fourth verse gives evidence of so delicate an ear and such dexterous power of hand as no other poet between the Restoration date and Blake's own time has left proof of in serious or tragic song. Great as is Dryden's lyrical work in more ways than one, its main quality is mere strength of intellect and solidity of handling--the forcible and imperial manner of his satires; and in pure literal song-writing, which (rather than any 'ode' or such-like mixed poem) may be taken as the absolute and final test of a poet's lyrical nature, he never came near this mark. Francois Villon and Aphra Behn, the two most inexpressibly non-respectable of male or female Bohemians and poets, were alike in this as well; that the supreme gift of each, in a time sufficiently barren of lyrical merit, was the gift of writing admirable songs; and this, after all, has perhaps borne better fruit for us than any gift of moral excellence.

[25] Another version of this line, with less of pungent and brilliant effect, has yet a touch of sound in it worth preserving: some may even prefer it in point of simple lyrical sweetness:

"She played and she melted in all her prime: Ah! that sweet love should be thought a crime."

[26] On closer inspection of Blake's rapid autograph I suspect that in the second line those who please may read "the ruddy limbs and flowering hair," or perhaps "flowery;" but the type of flame is more familiar to Blake. Compare further on "A Song of Liberty."

[27] Other readings are "soothed" and "smiled"--readings adopted after the insertion of the preceding stanza. As the subject is a child not yet grown to standing and walking age, these readings are perhaps better, though less simple in sound, than the one I have retained.

[28] Here and throughout to the end, duly altering metre and grammar with a quite laudable care, Blake has substituted "my father" for the "priests;" not I think to the improvement of the poem, though probably with an eye to making the end cohere rather more closely with the beginning. This and the "Myrtle" are shoots of the same stock, and differ only in the second grafting. In the last-named poem the father's office was originally thus;

"Oft my myrtle sighed in vain To behold my heavy chain: Oft my father saw us sigh, And laughed at our simplicity."

Here too Blake had at first written, "Oft the priest beheld us sigh;" he afterwards cancelled the whole passage, perhaps on first remarking the rather too grotesque confusion of a symbolic myrtle with a literal wife; and the last stanza in either form is identical. The simple subtle grace of both poems, and the singular care of revision bestowed on them, are equally worth notice.

[29] Those who insist on the tight lacing of grammatical stays upon the "pained loveliness" of a muse's over-pliant body may use if they please Blake's own amended reading; in which otherwise the main salt of the poem is considerably diluted as by tepid water: the angel (one might say) has his sting blunted and the best quill of his pinion pulled out.

"And without one word said Had a peach from the tree; And still as a maid," &c.

[30] We may find place here for another fairy song, quaint in shape and faint in colour, but with the signet of Blake upon it; copied from a loose scrap of paper on the back of which is a pencilled sketch of Hercules throttling the serpents, whose twisted limbs make a sort of spiral cradle around and above the child's triumphant figure: an attendant, naked, falls back in terror with sharp recoil of drawn-up limbs; Alcmena and Amphitryon watch the struggle in silence, he grasping her hand.

"A fairy leapt upon my knee Singing and dancing merrily; I said, 'Thou thing of patches, rings, Pins, necklaces, and such-like things, Disgracer of the female form, Thou paltry gilded poisonous worm!' Weeping, he fell upon my thigh, And thus in tears did soft reply: 'Knowest thou not, O fairies' lord, How much by us contemned, abhorred, Whatever hides the female form That cannot bear the mortal storm? Therefore in pity still we give Our lives to make the female live; And what would turn into disease We turn to what will joy and please.'"

Even so dim and slight a sketch as this may be of worth as indicating Blake's views of the apparent and the substantial form of things, the primary and the derivative life; also as a sample of his roughest and readiest work.

[31] Lest the kingdom of love left under the type of a woman should be over powerful for a nation of hard fighters and reasoners, such as Blake conceived the "ancients" to be. Compare for his general style of fancies on classic matters the prologue to "Milton" and the Sibylline Leaves on Homer and Virgil. To his half-trained apprehension Rome seemed mere violence and Greece mere philosophy.

[32] Let the reader take another instance of the culture given to these songs--a gift which has happily been bequeathed by Blake to his editor. This one was at first divided into five equal stanzas; the last two running thus:--

"'And pity no more would be If all were happy as we;' At his curse the sun went down, And the heavens gave a frown.

"Down poured the heavy rain Over the new-reaped grain; And Misery's increase Is Mercy, Pity, Peace."

Thus one might say is the curse confuted; for if, as the "grievous devil" will have it, the root of the sweetest goodness is in material evil, then may the other side answer that even by his own showing the flower or "increase" from that root is not evil, but good: a soft final point of comfort missed by the change which gives otherwise fresher colour to this poem.

[33] But as above shewn the vision of the wise man or poet is wider than both; sees beyond the angel's blind innocent enjoyment to a deeper faith than his simple nature can grasp or include; sees also past the truth of the devil's sad ingenious "analytics" to the broader sense of things, seen by which, "Good and Evil are no more."

[34] Query "Putting?" This whole poem is jotted down in a close rough handwriting, not often easy to follow with confidence.

[35] In the line "A God or else a Pharisee," Blake with a pencil-scratch has turned "a God" to "a devil"; as if the words were admittedly or admissibly interchangeable! A prophet so wonderfully loose-tongued may well be the despair of his faithfullest commentators: but as it happens the pencil-scratch should here be of some help and significance to us: following this small clue, we may come to distinguish the God of his belief from this demon-god of the created "mundane shell"--the God of Pharisaic religion and moral law.

[36] The creator by division, father of men and women, fashioner of evil and good; literally in the deepest sense "the God of this world," who "does not know the garment from the man;" cannot see beyond the two halves which he has made by violence of separation; would have the body perishable, yet the qualities of the bodily life permanent: thus inverting order and reversing fact. Parallel passages might be brought in by the dozen on all hands, after a little dipping into mystic books; but I want to make no more room here for all this than is matter of bare necessity.

[37] We shall see this presently. I conceive however that Blake, to save time and contract the space of his preaching, uses the consecrated Hebrew name to design now the giver of the Mosaic law, now that other and opposite Divinity which after the "body of clay" had been "devoured" was the residue or disembodied victorious spirit of the human Saviour. Mysticism need not of necessity be either inaccurate or incoherent: neither need it give offence by its forms and expressions of faith: but a mystic is but human after all, and with the best intentions may slip somewhere, especially a mystic so little in _training_ as Blake, and so much of a poet or artist; who is not accustomed to any careful feeling of his way among words, except with an eye to the perfection of their bodily beauty. Indeed, as appears by Mr. Crabb Robinson's notes of his conversation, Blake affirmed that according to scripture itself the world was created by "the Elohim," not by Jehovah; whose covenant he elsewhere asserted was simply "forgiveness of sins." Thus even according to this heretical creed the God of the Jews would seem to be ranged on the same side with Christ against "the God of this world."

[38] Compare this fragment of a paraphrase or "excursus" on a lay sermon by a modern pagan philosopher of more material tendencies; but given to such tragic indulgence in huge Titanic dithyrambs. "Nature averse to crime? I tell you, nature lives and breathes by it; hungers at all her pores for bloodshed, aches in all her nerves for the help of sin, yearns with all her heart for the furtherance of cruelty. Nature forbid that thing or this? Nay, the best or worst of you will never go so far as she would have you; no criminal will come up to the measure of her crimes, no destruction seem to her destructive enough. We, when we would do evil, can disorganise a little matter, shed a little blood, quench a little breath at the door, of a perishable body; this we can do, and can call it crime. Unnatural is it? Good friend, it is by criminal things and deeds unnatural that nature works and moves and has her being; what subsides through inert virtue, she quickens through active crime; out of death she kindles life; she uses the dust of man to strike her light upon; she feeds with fresh blood the innumerable insatiable mouths suckled at her milkless breast; she takes the pain of the whole world to sharpen the sense of vital pleasure in her limitless veins: she stabs and poisons, crushes and corrodes, yet cannot live and sin fast enough for the cruelty of her great desire. Behold, the ages of men are dead at her feet; the blood of the world is on her hands; and her desire is continually toward evil, that she may see the end of things which she hath made. Friends, if we would be one with nature, let us continually do evil with our might. But what evil is here for us to do, where the whole body of things is evil? The day's spider kills the day's fly, and calls it a crime? Nay, could we thwart nature, then might crime become possible and sin an actual thing. Could but a man do this; could he cross the courses of the stars, and put back the times of the sea; could he change the ways of the world and find out the house of life to destroy it; could he go into heaven to defile it and into hell to deliver it from subjection; could he draw down the sun to consume the earth, and bid the moon shed poison or fire upon the air; could he kill the fruit in the seed and corrode the child's mouth with the mother's milk; then had he sinned and done evil against nature. Nay, and not then: for nature would fain have it so, that she might create a world of new things; for she is weary of the ancient life: her eyes are sick of seeing and her ears are heavy with hearing; with the lust of creation she is burnt up, and rent in twain with travail until she bring forth change; she would fain create afresh, and cannot, except it be by destroying: in all her energies she is athirst for mortal food, and with all her forces she labours in desire of death. And what are the worst sins we can do--we who live for a day and die in a night? a few murders, a few"--we need not run over the not so wholly insignificant roll-call; but it is curious to observe how the mystical evangelist and the material humourist meet in the reading of mere nature and join hands in their interpretation of the laws ruling the outer body of life: a vision of ghastly glory, without pity or help possible.

[39] Blake had first written "the creeping," then cancelled "the" and interlined the word "Antichrist": I have no doubt intending some such alteration as that in the text of "creeping" to "aping"; but as far as we can now know the day for rewriting his fair copy never came.

[40] There are (says the mystic) two forms of "humility": detestable both, and condemnable. By one, the extrinsic form, a man cringes and submits, doubts himself and gives in to others; becomes in effect impotent, a sceptic and a coward; by the other or intrinsic form, he conceives too meanly of his own soul, and comes to believe himself less than God--of course, to a pure Pantheist, the one radical and ruinous error which throws up on all sides a crop of lies and misconceptions, rank and ready; as base a thing to believe as an act of bodily "humility" were base to do: consequently any mere external worship is by this law heathenish, heretical and idolatrous. This heathenish or idolatrous heresy of spiritual humility comes merely of too much reliance on the reasoning power; man is undivine as to his mere understanding, and by using that as an eye instead of an eyeglass "distorts" all which he does not obliterate. "Pride of reason" is a foolish thing for any clerical defender of the "faith" to impugn; such pride is essentially humility. To be proud of having an empty eye-socket implies that you would be ashamed of having eyesight; then you are proud on the wrong side, and humble there exactly where humility is a mere blundering suicide's cut at his own throat; if you are _not_ of your nature heavenly, how shall any alien celestial quality be sewn or stuck on to you? in whose cast clothes will you crawl into heaven by rational or religious cross-roads? "Imputed righteousness" will not much help your case; if you "impute" a wrong quality to any imaginable substance, does your imputation change the substance? What it had not before, it has not now; your tongue has not the power of turning truth to a lie or a lie to truth; the fact gives your assertion a straight blow in the face. The mystic who says that man is God has some logical cause for pride; but the sceptic has no more than the cleric--he who asserts that reason, which is finite, can be final, is essentially as "humble" as he who admits that he can be "saved" by accepting as a gift some "imputed" goodness which is not in any sense his. For reason--the "spectre" of the _Jerusalem_--is no matter for pride; if you make out that to be the best faculty about you, you give proof of the stupidest modesty and hatefullest humility. Look across the lower animal reason, and over the dim lying limit of tangible and changeable flesh; and be humble if you can or dare, then; for if what you apprehend of yourself beyond is not God, there is none--except in that sad sense of a daemon or natural force, strong only to create and to divide and to destroy and to govern by reason or religion the material scheme of things. _Extra hominem nulla salus._ "God is no more than man; _because_ man is no less than God:" there is Blake's Pantheistic Iliad in a nutshell.

[41] An ugly specimen of ready-writing; meaning of course "with the sacrifice of bloody prey:" but doubtless even Blake would not have let this stand, though we cannot safely alter it: and the passage did upon the whole appear worth citing.

[42] This is so like Blake's style of design that one can scarcely help fancying he must somewhere have translated it into colours perhaps more comprehensible than his words: have given somewhere in painter's types the likeness of that bodily appetite, serpentine food of the serpent, a lithe and strenuous body of clay, fair with luminous flakes of eruptive poison, foul with cold and coloured scales as the scales of a leper in grain; with green pallor of straining mouth and bloodlike expansion of fiery throat; teeth and claws convulsed with the painful lust of pain, eyelids cloven in sunder with a dull flame of desire, the visible venom of its breath shot sharp against the face and eyes of the divine human soul: he, disembodied yet incarnate in the eternal body, stripped of accidental and clothed with essential flesh, naked of attribute that he may be girdled with substance, wrestling silent with fair great limbs, but with calm hair and brows blanched as in fire, with light of lordship in the "sunclear joyful eyes" that already absorb and devour by sweet strength of radiance the relapsing reluctant bulk of body, that foulest ravenous birth begotten of accident or error upon time; eyes beautiful with the after-light of ancient tears, that shall not weep again for ever: "for the former things are passed away": and by that light of theirs shall all men see light. Behind these two, an intense and tremulous night stricken through with stars and fire; and overhead the dividing roof and underfoot the sundering floor-work of the grave; a waste place beyond, full of risen bones that gather flesh and springing roots that strike out or catch at light flying flames of life. Decidedly the design must exist somewhere; and presumably in "Golgonooza." We have the artist's prophetic authority for believing that his works written and painted before he came upon earth do in effect fill whole chambers in heaven, and are "the delight and study of archangels:" an apocalyptic fact not unnaturally unacceptable and inconceivable to the cleverest of Scotch stonemasons.

[43] Compare Hugo's admirable poem in the _Chatiments_ (vii. 11. p. 319-321)--"Paroles d'un conservateur a propos d'un perturbateur:"--where, speaking through the mouth of "Elizab, a scribe," the chief poet of our time gives in his great swift manner a dramatic summary of the view taken by priests and elders of Christ. It is worth looking to trace out how nearly the same historical points of objection are selected and the same lines of inference struck into by the two poets; one aiming straight at present politics, one indirectly at mystic doctrine.

"Cet homme etait de ceux qui n'ont rien de sacre, Il ne respectait rien de tout ce qu'on respecte. Pour leur inoculer sa doctrine suspecte, Il allait ramassant dans les plus mechants lieux Des bouviers, des pecheurs, des droles bilieux, D'immondes va-nu-pieds n'ayant ni sou ni maille: Il faisait son cenacle avec cette canaille.

* * * * *

L'honnete homme indigne rentrait dans sa maison Quand ce jongleur passait avec cette sequelle.

* * * * *

Il trainait a sa suite une espece de fille. Il allait perorant, ebranlant la famille, Et la religion et la societe. Il sapait la morale et la propriete.

* * * * *

Quant aux pretres, Il les dechirait; bref, il blasphemait. Cela Dans la rue. Il contait toutes ces horreurs-la Aux premiers gueux venus, sans cape et sans semelles. Il fallait en finir, les lois etaient formelles, On l'a crucifie."

[44] In a briefer and less important fragment of verse Blake as earnestly inculcates this faith of his: that all mere virtues and vices were known before Christ; of right and wrong Plato and Cicero, men uninspired, were competent to speak as well as he; but until his advent "the moral virtues in their pride" held rule over the world, and among them as they rode clothed with war and sacrifice, driving souls to hell before them, shone "upon the rivers and the streams" the face of the Accuser, holy God of this Pharisaic world. Then arose Christ and said to man "Thy sins are all forgiven thee;" and the "moral virtues," in terror lest their reign of war and accusation should now draw to an end, cried out "Crucify him," and formed with their own hands the cross and the nails and the spear: and the Accuser spoke to them saying:--

"Am I not Lucifer the great And ye my daughters, in great state, The fruit of my mysterious tree Of Good and Evil and Misery?"

If, the preacher adds, moral virtue was Christianity, Christ's pretensions were madness, "and Caiaphas and Pilate men praiseworthy;" and the lion's den a fitter emblem of heaven than the sheepfold. "The moral Christian is the cause of the unbeliever;" and Antichrist is incarnate in those who close heaven against sinners

"With iron bars in virtuous state And Rhadamanthus at the gate."

But men have so long allowed the heathen virtues, whose element is war and whose essence retaliation, to "take Jesus' and Jehovah's name" that the Accuser, Antichrist and Lucifer though he be, is now worshipped by those holy names over all the world: and the era called Christian is the era of his reign. For the rest, this new relic has no special merit, although it may be allowed some share of interest as a supplement or illustration to the larger poem or sermon.