Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/137

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WILLIAM BLAKE
113

There are descriptions of feasts, of flames, of last judgments, of the new Eden, which are full of colour and splendour, passing without warning into the 'material sublime' of Fuseli, as in the picture of Urizen 'stonied upon his throne' in the eighth 'Night.' In the passages which we possess in the earlier and later version we see the myth of Blake gradually crystallising, the transposition of every intelligible symbol into the secret cipher. Thus we find 'Mount Gilead' changed into 'Mount Snowdon,' 'Beth Peor' into 'Cosway Vale,' and a plain image such as this:

'The Mountain called out to the Mountain, Awake, oh brother Mountain,'

is translated backwards into:

' Ephraim called out to Tiriel, Awake, oh brother Mountain.'

Images everywhere are seen freezing into types; they stop half-way, and have not yet abandoned the obscure poetry of the earlier Prophetic Books for the harder algebra of Milton and Jerusalem.