Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/186

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
172
EUROPE

and robes of Lis office grew to his flesh while he went, as Orc's chain once grew to the rock. (121-127.)

Such was the result of the fury of Orc in the cold northern region of Europe, while Rintrah and his fires swarmed in the deep, and Palainabron shot his lightning down his back — portion whence the spectre, the egotism, the experience, not the emanation exudes. (128-131.)

Enitharmon laughed in her sleep to see that daily life and reason had triumphed over imagination — woman over man — prohibition over inspired freedom, till the spiritual potencies were all weakened. (As elsewhere said, "Genius was forbidden.") (132-139).

But the flames of Orc still filled Albion's Angel with the mad desire of tyrannizing — still obedience sought to rule ; still restriction desired to create ; three times he tried to blow the trumpet, the productive passion of the last judgment. (139-146.)

But, according to the law, "If a man would persist in his folly he would become wise," from Albion leaped the spirit called Newton, the spirit of sleep ("Newton's sleep" in the poem from Felpham — of "single vision"), and he blew the trumpet. The restrictions of reason cramping spirit overset the restrictions of moral religion and bigotry cramping love and vision. The Angels fell. The dead did not rise. (147-151.)

Then Enitharmon woke — the Spirit of Space arose from the sleep of nature, the watery deluge of the five senses. The incident of her sleep was nothing to the prophetic emanation. She knew not that she had slept, and she called her children to renew the sports of night, the joys of the five senses. (152-155.) Joy is essentially awakening : restraint, sorrow, and reasoning are essentially sleep.

She calls Ethinthus — of whom no more is told than that she is queen of waters, and is to come though the earthworm call. She is a feminine emotion, and that she is a subtle name for the moon in this symbolic connection is left as a