female. They are true portions of spiritual experience, and have a right to be visible, even when they are "put off" as all states may be, or die and are buried.
Angels of Providence are not necessarily pure, holy, attractive, superior beings. In " Jerusalem," p. 50, ll. 4, 5, there is a Providence mentioned, who is, like the slaughtering commander of the sack of cities and the massacre of innocents in the Old Testament, a "murderous Providence, opposed to the Divine Lord Jesus." But the murdering done is not merely that of the outer spheres of creation where life lives on death, but enters within and destroys the soul with self-righteousness. This " Providence " (for which, perhaps, a more unsuitable name could not be found) is he whom we are told in the New Testament to fear, because after he has destroyed the body he is able to destroy the soul also.
Some attempt may be made now to understand the poem, but it is undoubtedly among the most difficult in the whole of Blake's collected works. William Bond, whom perhaps the girls mean to kill (it is not said how, but may be understood best in a spiritual sense), goes to church and submits his mind to literal dogma, attended by lower spiritual powers of love and vision. But the spiritual strength of the influences of obedience appear in the form of angels, and drive the pretty impulses away. (Urizen's bands of angels and warriors are also bands of influences that can divide and act in groups. " Vala," Night II. l. 21.)
William Bond entered into the darkest of Urizen's clouds, when he is the Primal Priest in the North, and taking to his bed prepared to die — as Urizen himself did more than once. The depressing influences of the obedient spirits stand at his head and feet, and watch his death. He is now in danger of being good for morality's sake, and not for love's sake — and this is death.
On his right hand was Mary Green. But why she is to be identified with Blake's wife if William Bond was Blake it is hard to see. She might at least have been called Mary Bond
- VOL. II. 2 *
