Their minds are touched by the sense of tears in human things, but to Blake 'a tear is an intellectual thing.' They sing of 'a woman like a dewdrop,' but Blake of 'the lineaments of gratified desire.' They shout hymns to God over a field of battle or in the arrogance of material empire; but Blake addresses the epilogue of his Gates of Paradise 'to the Accuser who is the God of this world':
'Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce,
And dost not know the garment from the man;
Every harlot was a virgin once,
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan.
Though thou art worshipped by the names divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The son of morn in weary night's decline,
The lost traveller's dream under the hill.'
Other poets find ecstasy in nature, but Blake only in imagination. He addresses the Prophetic Book of The Ghost of Abel 'to Lord Byron in the wilderness,' and asks: 'What doest thou here, Elijah? Can a poet doubt of the visions of Jehovah? Nature has no outline, but Imagination has. Nature has no time, but Imagination has. Nature has no supernatural, and dissolves.
