Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/190

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166
WILLIAM BLAKE

many things once held to be discordant, and adjust the many varying interpretations of the Bible and the other books of ancient religions by a universal application of what had been taken in too personal a way. Hence many of the puzzling 'correspondences' of English cities and the tribe of Judah, of 'the Poetic Genius, which is the Lord.'

There is an outcry in Jerusalem:

No individual ought to appropriate to Himself
Or to his Emanation, any of the Universal Characteristics
Of David or of Eve, of the Woman, of the Lord,
Of Reuben or of Benjamin, of Joseph or Judah or Levi.
Those who dare appropriate to themselves Universal Attributes
Are the Blasphemous Selfhoods and must be broken asunder.
A Vegetable Christ and a Virgin Eve, are the Hermaphroditic
Blasphemy: by his Maternal Birth he put off that Evil One,
And his Maternal Humanity must be put off Eternally,
Lest the Sexual Generation swallow up Regeneration:
Come, Lord Jesus, take on Thee the Satanic Body of Holiness!'