II
'There are three powers in man of conversing with Paradise,' said Blake, and he defined them as the three sons of Noah who survived the flood, and who are Poetry, Painting, and Music. Through all three powers, and to the last moments of his life on earth, Blake conversed with Paradise. We are told that he used to sing his own songs to his own music, and that, when he was dying, 'he composed and uttered songs to his Maker,' and 'burst out into singing of the things he saw in heaven.' And with almost the last strength of his hands he had made a sketch of his wife before he 'made the rafters ring,' as a bystander records, with the improvisation of his last breath.
Throughout life his desire had been, as he said, 'to converse with my friends in eternity, see visions, dream dreams, and prophesy and speak parables unobserved.' He says again:
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'I rest not from my great task |
