open."' At the beginning of his poem Blake writes:
'The Plow goes forth in tempests and lightnings and the Harrow cruel
In blights of the east; the heavy Roller follows in howlings';
and the imagery returns at intervals, in the vision of 'the Last Vintage,' the 'Great Harvest and Vintage of the Nations.' The personal element comes in the continual references to the cottage at Felpham;
'He set me down in Felpham's Vale and prepared a beautiful
Cottage for me that in three years I might write all these Visions
To display Nature's cruel holiness: the deceits of Natural Religion';
and it is in the cottage near the sea that he sees the vision of Milton, when he
'Descended down a Paved work of all kinds of precious stones
Out from the eastern sky; descending down into my Cottage
Garden; clothed in black, severe and silent he descended.'
He awakes from the vision to find his wife by his side:
