Space may be made here (before we pass on to larger things if not greater) for another stray note or two on separate poems. The Crystal Cabinet, one of the completest short poems by Blake which are not to be called songs, is an example of the somewhat jarring and confused mixture of apparent "allegory" with actual "vision" which is the great source of trouble and error to rapid readers of his verse or students of his designs. The "cabinet" is either passionate or poetic vision—a spiritual gift, which may soon and easily become a spiritual bondage; wherein a man is locked up, with keys of gold indeed, yet is he a prisoner all the same: his prison built by his love or his art, with a view open beyond of exquisite limited loveliness, soft quiet and light of dew or moon, and a whole fresh world to rest in or look into, but intangible and simply reflective; all present pleasure or power trebled in it, until you try at too much and attempt to turn spiritual to physical reality—"to seize the inmost form" with "hands of flame" laid upon things of the spirit which will endure no such ardent handling—to translate eternal existence
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.
