“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.)