Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/142

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128
THE FIRST BOOK OF URIZEN.

imagination of each man as he weeps over the cold corpse, Reason.

And now, though in so elementary a manner was it manifest that the vision seemed remote, as a far star seems, yet this division was beheld by the eternal brotherhood of ideas that people the imaginative eternity.

8. And by the bodying power of tears and cries, this mere globe, this embryonic pity in the air — for the air is the heart — took presently the female form.

9. At sight of emotion separate from imagination Eternity shuddered, as Los had shuddered at the sight of separated Reason and Self-hood. This shudder delivered that female form, as a born child, as a divided region.

10. And the Eternals gave her her name and fled, for imagination flies from unimaginative reason.

11. And the Eternals demanded a tent, a system of experienced emotion to hide the new couple.

12. And they began to weave it. It is, in the mind science, in the body generativeness. We shall be told in another book that in social life it is architecture. (" Milton," p. 24, 1. 56.) It is construction, a nearer approach to creation than analysis, or reason, though not the same thing.


Chapter VI.


1. Los who had pitied separate Reason, now pitied separate emotion. He saw that she could be fructified and attempted to fructify her. But the sentiments shrink from the exultations, — love trembles before prophecy, — space quivers under the power of Time ; Pity fled.

2. But Los presently succeeded in his object, and the shudder of the Eternals again marked an epoch in the great story of the fructifications.

3. And Enitharmon — as the female now is called — felt herself engendering helplessness, for such is that which vision