Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/40

This seems to have been too "curious" as a "view of contemporary history and politics/' and though not erased by Blake, has not been published. We see in it a conception of the vegetative world as that into which Ololon could enter in female form, later, but not in a male form without becoming (as Urizen did, under the similar Tree of Mystery) an enemy of the Human (or imaginative) race. (" Milton," p. 36, 1. 14.) La Fayette is at last introduced —

"Fayette beside King Lewis stood,

He saw him sign his hand,

And soon he saw the famine rage

About the fruitful land.

Fayette liked the Queen to smile

And wink her lovely eye, —

And soon he saw the pestilence

From street to street to fly.

Fayette beheld the King and Queen

In tears of iron bound,

But mute Fayette wept tear for tear

And guarded them around.

Fayette, Fayette, thou 'rt bought and sold,

For I will see thy tears

Of pity are exchanged for those

Of selfish slavish fears."

The poem was to end here, but it had not hit the subject in the centre. Blake worried himself to obtain a better rendering for the last verse that should show that he was aiming at something else than rhymed history. He crossed out the last four lines and began —

"Fayette beside King Lewis stood,

His captains false around.

Thou 'rt bought and sold . . . ."

But this brought the lines into too telescopic a compression, and was given up. This was tried —

"Who will exchange his own fireside

For the steps of another's door ?

Who will exchange his wheaten loaf

For the links of a dungeon floor?"