21The Gods of the earth and sea
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree;
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain.
23, 24 'But their search was all in vain
Till they sought in the human brain.'
The 'Tree of Mystery' signifies 'Moral Law.' See Jerusalem, f. 28, ll. 14-19: —
'He [Albion] sat by Tyburn's brook, and underneath his heel shot up
A deadly Tree: he nam'd it Moral Virtue, and the Law
Of God, who dwells in Chaos, hidden from the human sight.
The Tree spread over him its cold shadows (Albion groan'd),
They bent down, they felt the earth, and again enrooting
Shot into many a Tree, an endless labyrinth of woe.'
A very similar description of the growth of the Tree is found in Ahania (engr. 1795), chap, iii, thus condensed by Swinburne (Essay, p. 121): 'Compare the passage . . . where the growth of it is defined; rooted in the rock of separation, watered with the tears of a jealous God, shot up from sparks and fallen germs of material seed; being after all a growth of mere error, and vegetable (not spiritual) life; the topmost stem of it made into a cross whereon to nail the dead redeemer and friend of men.'
[To The SONGS OF EXPERIENCE]
1Cruelty has a Human Heart,
And Jealousy a Human Face ;
Terror the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy the Human Dress.
5The Human Dress is forged Iron,
The Human Form a fiery Forge,
The Human Face a Furnace seal'd,
The Human Heart its hungry Gorge.
I place this poem as appendix to the Songs of Experience in the absence of evidence that it was included in any authentic copy of the Songs issued during Blake's lifetime. Out of fifteen examples of the Songs of Experience
