For the gentle wind does move Silently, invisibly.
5 I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart, Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears� Ah, she doth depart.
Soon as she was gone from me
10 A traveller came by Silently, invisibly� O, was no deny.
I asked a thief
I asked a thief to steal me a peach, He turned up his eyes; I ask'd a lithe lady to lie her down, Holy & meek she cries.
5 As soon as I went An angel came. He wink'd at the thief And smild at the dame�
And without one word said
10 Had a peach from the tree And still as a maid Enjoy'd the lady.
And did those feet1
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen?
5 And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among those dark Satanic Mills?2
1. These quatrains occur in the preface to Blake's apocalyptic desire is widely used as a hymn, prophetic poem Milton. There is an ancient belief national anthem, or school song by just those that Jesus came to England with Joseph of Ari-establishment figures whom Blake would call mathea, the merchant who is identified in the Gos-"angels." pels as making the arrangements for Christ's burial 2. There may be an allusion here to industrial following the crucifixion. Blake adapts the legend England, but the mill is also Blake's symbol for a to his own conception of a spiritual Israel, in which mechanistic and utilitarian worldview, according the significance of biblical events is as relevant to to which, as he said elsewhere, "the same dull England as to Palestine. By a particularly Blakean round, even of a universe" becomes "a mill with irony, this poem of mental war in the service of complicated wheels."
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12 4 / WILLIAM BLAKE
Bring me my Bow of burning gold,
10 Bring me my Arrows of desire,
Bring me my Spear; O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,
15 Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant Land.
ca. 1804-10 ca. 1804-10
From A Vision of the Last Judgment1
For the Year 1810 Additions to Blake's Catalogue of Pictures &c
The Last Judgment [will be] when all those are Cast away who trouble Religion with Questions concerning Good & Evil or Eating of the Tree of those Knowledges or Reasonings which hinder the Vision of God turning all into a Consuming fire. When Imaginative Art & Science & all Intellectual Gifts, all the Gifts of the Holy Ghost, are lookd upon as of no use & only Contention remains to Man, then the Last Judgment begins, & its Vision is seen by the Imaginative Eye of Every one according to the situation he holds.
[PAGE 68] The Last Judgment is not Fable or Allegory but Vision. Fable or Allegory are a totally distinct & inferior kind of Poetry. Vision, or Imagination, is a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably. Fable or Allegory is Formd by the daughters of Memory. Imagination is Surrounded by the daughters of Inspiration, who in the aggregate are calld Jerusalem, [PAGE 69] Fable is Allegory, but what Critics call The Fable is Vision itself, [PAGE 68] The Hebrew Bible & the Gospel of Jesus are not Allegory, but Eternal Vision, or Imagination of All that Exists. Note here that Fable or Allegory is Seldom without some Vision. Pilgrim's Progress is full of it, the Greek Poets the same; but Allegory & Vision ought to be known as Two Distinct Things, & so calld for the Sake of Eternal Life. Plato has made Socrates say that Poets & Prophets do not know or Understand what they write or Utter; this is a most Pernicious Falshood. If they do not, pray is an inferior Kind to be calld Knowing? Plato confutes himself.2
The Last Judgment is one of these Stupendous Visions. I have represented it as I saw it. To different People it appears differently, as [PAGE 69] every thing else does; for tho on Earth things seem Permanent, they are less permanent than a Shadow, as we all know too well.
1. In this essay Blake describes and comments on intellectual power; to conventional and coercive his painting of the Last Judgment, now lost, which virtue; to what is seen by the "corporeal" eye; to is said to have measured seven by five feet and to the arts; and to the Last Judgment and the apochave included a thousand figures. The text has alyptic redemption of humanity and of the created been transcribed and rearranged, as the sequence world�an apocalypse that is to be achieved of the pages indicates, from the scattered frag-through the triumph over the bodily eye by human ments in Blake's Notebook. The opening and clos-imagination, as manifested in the creative artist. ing parts are reprinted here as Blake's fullest, 2. In Plato's dialogue Ion, in which Socrates traps although cryptic, statements of what he means by Ion into admitting that, because poets compose hv "vision." These sections deal with the relations of inspiration, they do so without knowing what they imaginative vision to allegory, Greek fable, and the are doing. biblical story; to uncurbed human passion and
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A VISION OF THE LAST JUDGMENT / 125
The Nature of Visionary Fancy, or Imagination, is very little Known, & the Eternal nature & permanence of its ever Existent Images is considered as less permanent than the things of Vegetative & Generative Nature; yet the Oak dies as well as the Lettuce, but Its Eternal Image & Individuality never dies, but renews by its seed. Just so the Imaginative Image returns by the seed of Contemplative Thought. The Writings of the Prophets illustrate these conceptions of the Visionary Fancy by their various sublime & Divine Images as seen in the Worlds of Vision. * * *
Let it here be Noted that the Greek Fables originated in Spiritual Mystery [PAGE 72] & Real Visions, Which are lost & clouded in Fable & Allegory, while the Hebrew Bible & the Greek Gospel are Genuine, Preservd by the Saviour's Mercy. The Nature of my Work is Visionary or Imaginative; it is an Endeavour to Restore what the Ancients calld the Golden Age.
[PAGE 69] This world of Imagination is the World of Eternity; it is the Divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the Vegetated body. This World of Imagination is Infinite & Eternal, whereas the world of Generation, or Vegetation, is Finite & Temporal. There Exist in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature.
All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the Divine [PAGE 70] body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity, The Human Imagination, who appeard to Me as Coming to Judgment among his Saints & throwing off the Temporal that the Eternal might be Establishd. Around him were seen the Images of Existences according to a certain order suited to my Imaginative Eye. * * *
[PAGE 87] Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed & governd their Passions, or have No Passions, but because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion, but Realities of Intellect from which All the Passions Emanate Uncurbed in their Eternal Glory. The Fool shall not enter into Heaven, let him be ever so Holy. Holiness is not The price of Enterance into Heaven. Those who are cast out Are All Those who, having no Passions of their own because No Intellect, Have spent their lives in Curbing & Governing other People's by the Various arts of Poverty & Cruelty of all kinds. Wo Wo Wo to you Hypocrites! Even Murder the Courts of Justice, more merciful than the Church, are compelld to allow, is not done in Passion but in Cool Blooded Design & Intention.