Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/213

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JERUSALEM II.
199

than himself. It over-topped him as a tree may over-top a man, and bending down it shot up all around the central conception, making his mind one labyrinth of woe.

P. 28, 11. 20 to 27.— The Druid error— the mistake of sacrificing persons instead of personality — is told, with the consequence that Albion's sons, being self-hoods, would have become victims. But they were mental and entrenched themselves in laws and formulas to make Imagination ashamed of itself, as they were jealous of it. Yet every one had his own emanation with whom he took delight such as he could not justify by demonstration. Thus they were the first transgressors.

P. 29, 11. 1 to 5. — The Divine Vision appeared as a sunset in red clouds : symbol of Incarnation.

P. 29, 11. 6 to 27. — With a promise of redemption following a detailed account of the mental state from which Albiou is to be redeemed, the Sun of this Sunset enclosed the universal truths — the Human Family — who also are understood to mean the four Zoas.

P. 29, 11. 28 to 32. — But as the Incarnation or Sunset proceeds, Albion's locks grow dark, for he is the Manhood of the Incarnation whose Earth and Sea are the darkness into which the Sun sets. From his darkening locks (his more and more creatively-deluded ideas, and personalized intellect) two forms escape, quitting the Divine Family. They are later found to be Urfchona and. Enitharmon. They are the ideas that underlie experience, and experience itself cannot entirely destroy them. (Time and Space.)

They flee from Albion's egotistic centre, — his valleys Eastward. They are ideas common to all, and owned by none.

Then follows the account of a vision seen by Albion, which is given in more extended form in " Vala," III. 44, &c.

P. 29, 11. 33 to 37. — The subject is the story of Redemption as told by the Christians who were not mystics during the eighteen hundred years when " man was a dream/' described in "Europe." Vala calls the scene a vision of Ahania in the