Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/303

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
MILTON.
269

"Let her be offered up to holiness: Tirzah numbers her:
She numbers with her fingers every fibre ere it grow:
Where is the Lamb of God? where is the promise of his coming?
Her shadowy sisters form the bones, even the bones of Horeb
Around the marrow; and the orbed scull around the brain;
She ties the knot of nervous fibres into a white brain;
She ties the knot of bloody veins into a red-hot heart;
She ties the knot of milky seed into two lovely heavens,
Two yet but one; each in the other sweet reflected; these
Are our Three Heavens beneath the shades of Beulah, land of rest."

Here and henceforward the clamour and glitter of the poem become more and more confused; nevertheless every page is set about with jewels; as here, in a more comprehensible form than usual:—

"God sent his two servants Whitfield and Wesley; were they prophets?
Or were they idiots and madmen? 'Show us Miracles'?
Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote
Their life's whole comfort to entire scorn, injury, and death?"

Take also these scraps of explanation mercifully vouch-safed us:—

"Bowlahoola is named Law by Mortals: Tharmas founded it
Because of Satan  * * * *
But Golgonooza is named Art and Manufacture by mortal men.
In Bowlahoola Los's Anvils stand and his Furnaces rage.
Bowlahoola thro' all its porches feels, tho' too fast founded
Its pillars and porticoes to tremble at the force
Of mortal or immortal arm; * * *
The Bellows are the Animal Lungs; the Hammers the Animal Heart;
The Furnaces the Stomach for digestion;"

(Here we must condense instead of transcribing. While thousands labour at this work of the Senses in the halls of Time, thousands "play on instruments stringed or fluted" to lull the labourers and drown the painful sound of the toiling members, and bring forgetfulness of this