Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/304

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MILTON II.

plaiuod. All arc evil and satanic except when in repose. They are essentially female. Their "will" has no place in Imagination. They belong to Bowlaboola. Law, itself, is innocent in Repose. They are the "maternal humanity/' taken together. They unite spirit and body, and lower spirit, and are the bridge between mind and "matter," or lower mind, and digestion and gestation are their physical symbols, and law and morality their invention.

Blake's mythic system being explained, we are able to look down into matter with Ololon.

P. 34, ll. 50 to 55. We see that while the wars of eternity give life, those of time and space give death, even if we include marriage among the wars, for mortal birth gives death.

P. 35, ll. 1 to 25. And female forms weave the woof of death, which is that of unforgiveness in the moral world, as in the physical, in all the quarters of humanity symbolised under portions of London, or of the world. But there is a spiritual life that cannot be had except by putting on the mortal and allowing it to destroy you. This is G-olgonooza. Christ only can be both mortal and spiritual, alive and dead at once.

P. 35, ll. 26 to 30. Ololon's multitudes expressed their contrition to the starry eight — Milton and the seven eyes.

P. 35, ll. 30 to 35. They rejoiced, for they saw that the contrition of Ololon had opened a road to eternity, just as morality of Rahab closes the road.

P. 35, ll. 42 to 47. There is a moment in every period of time which cannot be found by the powers of external nature, and in this moment the Divine influx descends into man to make beautiful the other moments also. It is in the symbolic morning, just at the time when the sun reaches the point midway between Zenith and Nadir (see chapter on the Zodiacal symbolism of the Cherub) at the point of the commingling influences of reason (Urizen) and love (Luvah) where masculine influx had already descended (see diagram on page 32 of present poem), and makes the beauty (the wild thyme) of the earth send up its aspirations towards the Zenith,