grubs for their nestlings. At will should the microscopist who gropes among unprofitable secrets be capable of flight in the empyrean. At times should the sharp-fingered anatomists, who
be capable of rising in supplication to the eternal sun of life.
Now, lest this appeal for the dignity of life's energy should be mistaken, lest indeed people like Mr. Swinburne and others should ever accuse him of endorsing licence, Blake appends to this aphorism these memorable words:—
"And reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy." In other words—and in the teaching of every other work of Blake—this instinctive energy, this imaginating birthright of man, is worse than useless to us if we do not use it aright. This energy is nothing without noble purpose. Life without object, imagination without reason, energy without order, are mighty powers prostituted and in process of ceasing to be. "He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence." "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted
