“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.