in the primal joy of creation, one has a vision of
the large and noble harmony he strove after between an emancipated
flesh and a free spirit. William Blake, in his Adamic innocence of
"sin," has something in him that suggests Walt Whitman, but unlike
Whitman he prefers to use the figure of Christ rather than any vague
"ensemble" of nature-forces to symbolise the triumphant nuptials of
soul and body.

Sometimes in his strange verses one has the impression that one is
reading the fragmentary and broken utterances of some great ancient
poet-philosopher--some Pythagoras or Empedocles--through whose
gnomic oracles runs the rhythm of the winds and tides, and for
whose ears the stars in their courses have a far-flung harmony.

He often seems to make use of the Bible and Biblical usages, very
much as the ancient poets made use of Hesiod or of Homer, treating
such writings with reverence, but subordinating what is borrowed
from them to new and original purpose.

"Hear the voice of the Bard,
Who present, past and future sees,
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walked among the ancient trees.

"Calling the lapsed soul
And weeping in the evening dew,
That might control The starry pole
And fallen, fallen light renew!

"O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass!
Night is worn
And the Morn
Rises from the slumbrous mass.

"Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor
The watery shore
Is given thee till break of day."

If I were asked to name a writer whose work conveys to one's mind,
free of any admixture of rhetoric or of any alloy of cleverness,
thevery impact and shock of pure inspired genius, I would
unhesitatingly name William Blake. One is strangely conscious in
reading him of the presence of some great unuttered power--some
vast demiurgic secret--struggling like a buried Titan just below the
surface of his mind, and never quite finding vocal expression.

Dim shapes--vast inchoate shadows--like dreams of forgotten worlds
and shadows of worlds as yet unborn, seem to pass backwards and
forwards over the brooding waters of his spirit. There is no poet
perhaps who gives such an impression of primordial creative
force--force hewing at the roots of the world and weeping and laughing
from sheer pleasure at the touch of that dream stuff whereof life is
made. Above his h