Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/283

all wrought out, of the secret and jealous law of introspective faith divided against itself and the god of its worship, but strong enough to smite the over-confident champion of men even in his time of triumph, when he "thought Urizen slain by his wrath: I am God, said he, eldest of things." (II. 8.) Suddenly the judgment of the jealous wrath of God falls upon him; the rock hurled as an arrow "enters his bosom; his beautiful visage, his tresses that gave light to the mornings of heaven, were smitten with darkness.—But the rock fell upon the earth, Mount Sinai, in Arabia:" being indeed a type of the moral law of Moses, sent to destroy and suppress the native rebellious energies and active sins of men. Here one may catch fast hold of one thing—the identity of Blake's "Urizen," at least for this time, with the Deity of the earlier Hebrews; the God of the Law and Decalogue rather than of Job or the Prophets. "On the accursed tree of mystery" that shoots up under his heel from "tears and sparks of vegetation" fallen on the barren rock of separation, where "shrunk away from Eternals," alienated from the ancient freedom of the first Gods or Titans, averse to their large and liberal laws of life, the jealous God sat secret—on the topmost stem of this tree Urizen "nailed the corpse of his first-begotten." Thenceforward there fell upon the half-formed races of men sorrow only and pestilence, barren pain of unprofitable fruit and timeless burden of desire and disease. One need not sift the myth too closely; it would be like winnowing water and weighing cloud with scale or sieve. The two illustrations, it may here be said, are very slight—mere hints of a design, and merely touched with colour.