Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/211

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JERUSALEM II.
197

Demonstrative in Mind, thus by lodging Intellect in Experience and Happiness in Sensation, withered up Holiness in Emanative Imagination (Zion in Jerusalem) from every place of mental life (nations) and gave it birth in the dark land of outward act, narrow as mortal form. XIV. And withered the true Human form, — the expansive shape of the Imaginative Mind with its Light and Forgiveness, into the restricted Form of the Mind of Experience with its cruel laws. This is seen in the fourteenth stanza, — double seven. XV. But the Divine, the Pure Imagination is even in Moral law and experience, — though it weeps in clay like a new-born Infant. XVI. And. every Member of it, — every Idea — (feet and hands) upper or lower, though but made for the little space between the gates of birth and Death, has yet some visible quality of Jesus, — of Humanity. XVII. Then the relation of all this with the slaying of the Lamb is seen. It was the dark self-righteous pride that killed the Innocence that was identical with Forgiveness. But the very perception of this sin is the beginning of regeneration. (While Christ was still on the cross, those who crucified knew not what they did. The world learned from the Resurrection.) The Lamb returns to Albion's shore, — Jerusalem is his bride. XVIII. In the eighteenth stanza — double nine — a new birth is prayed for, — that of the Spirit (or eternal part of mind) created to love while personality (or temporary part) is subdued to its fear. XIX. And the Spectre of Albion, named after born in the stanza after the ninth, so here in that following the double-ninth he is claimed and explained as the egotism of the writer, — as all in him that did not belong to Love — Repose — Innocence, nor to Mercy — Pity — Peace. And this evil self also is armed in gold, for it seizes intellect which should be materials for the pillars of the Temple to make of it the material of weapons. XX. The attributes of the Spectre are told. His love is pride. His kindness dwells amid destruction. His heart is for his family, — his own ideas only. His cruelty for every other conception, however true—