Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/124

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WILLIAM BLAKE

a world laid out by convention for the untrustworthy; and he asks:

'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
That men get rich by.'

For twelve years, from the American to the French revolution, 'Angels and weak men' are to govern the strong, and then Europe is to be overwhelmed by the fire that had broken out in the West, though the ancient guardians of the five senses 'slow advance to shut the five gates of their law-built houses.'

'But the gates were consumed, and their bolts and hinges melted,
And the fierce flames burnt round the heavens, and round the abode of men.'

Here the myth, though it is present throughout, is an undercurrent, and the crying of the message is what is chiefly heard. In Europe (1794), which is written in lines broken up into frequent but not