Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/268

For terrible men stand on the shores, and in their robes I see
Children take refuge from the lightnings. * * * *
Ah vision from afar! ah rebel form that rent the ancient heavens!
* * * * Red flames the crest rebellious
And eyes of death; the harlot womb oft opened in vain
Heaves in eternal circles, now the times are returned upon thee."

"Thus wept the angel voice" of the guardian-angel of Albion; but the thirteen angels of the American provinces rent off their robes and threw down their sceptres and cast in their lot with the rebel; gathered together where on the hills

⁠⁠"called Atlantean hills,
Because from their bright summits you may pass to the golden world,
An ancient palace, archetype of mighty emperies,
Hears its immortal pinnacles, built in the forest of God
By Ariston the king of beauty for his stolen bride."

A myth of which we are to hear no more, significant probably of the rebellion of natural beauty against the intolerable tyranny of God, from which she has to seek shelter in the darkest part of his creation with the angelic or daemonic bridegroom (one of the descended "sons of God") who has wedded her by stealth and built her a secret shelter from the strife of divine things; where at least nature may breathe freely and take pleasure; whither also in their time congregate all other rebellious forces and spirits at war with the Creator and his laws. But the speech of "Boston's angel" we will at least transcribe: not without a wish that he had never since then spoken more incoherently and less musically.

"Must the generous tremble and leave his joy to the idle, to the pestilence,
That mock him? who commanded this? what God? what Angel?
To keep the generous from experience, till the ungenerous
Are unrestrained performers of the energies of nature,
Till pity is become a trade and generosity a science