The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice.

Come forth, worm of the silent valley, to thy pensive queen."

The helpless worm arose, and sat upon the Lily's leaf, And the bright cloud sailed on to find his partner in the vale.

III.

Then Thel, astonished, viewed the worm upon its dewy bed.

"Art thou a worm? image of weakness, art thou but a worm ?

I see thee, like an infant, wrapped in the Lily's leaf:
Ah weep not, little voice, thou canst not speak, but thou

canst weep.

Is this a worm? I see thee lie helpless and naked, weeping, And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mother's smiles."

The clod of clay heard the worm's voice, and rais'd her pitying head:

She bow'd over the weeping infant, and her life exhal'd In milky fondness: then on Thel she fixed her humble eyes.

"O beauty of the vales of Har! we live not for ourselves. Thou seest me, the meanest thing, and so I am indeed; My bosom of itself is cold and of itself is dark,

But He that loves the lowly pours His oil upon my head, And kisses me, and binds His nuptial bands around my breast,

And says:-Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee,

And I have given thee a crown that none can take away.'

VOL. II.

G

But how this is, sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot

know;

I ponder, and I cannot ponder: yet I live and love!"

The daughter of beauty wip'd her pitying tears with her white veil,

And said:" Alas! I knew not this, and therefore did I

weep.

That God would love a worm, I knew, and punish the evil

foot

That wilful bruised its helpless form; but that He cherish'd it With milk and oil, I never knew, and therefore did I weep. And I complained in the mild air, because I fade away, And lay me down in thy cold bed, and leave my shining lot."

"Queen of the vales," the matron clay answered; "I heard thy sighs,

And all thy moans flew o'er my roof, but I have call'd them down.

Wilt thou, O queen, enter my house? 'tis given thee to enter, And to return: fear nothing, enter with thy virgin feet."

IV.

The eternal gates' terrific porter lifted the northern bar;
Thel enter'd in and saw the secrets of the land unknown.
She saw the couches of the dead, and where the fibrous root
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows and of tears, where never smile was seen.

She wander'd in the land of clouds, through valleys dark, listening

Dolours and lamentations; wailing oft beside a dewy grave She stood in silence, listening to the voices of the ground, Till to her own grave-plot she came, and there she sat down, And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit:

"Why cannot the ear be closed to its own destruction? Or the glistening eye to the poison of a smile?

Why are eyelids stor'd with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting-men in ambush lie,

Or an eye of gifts and graces showering fruits and coined gold?

Why a tongue impress'd with honey from every wind? Why an ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in? Why a nostril wide inhaling terror, trembling and affright? Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy? Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?"

The virgin started from her scat, and with a shriek
Fled back unhinder'd till she came into the vales of Har.

IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL.

IN the MS. Note-book, to which frequent reference has been made in the Life, a page stands inscribed with the heading given above. It seems uncertain how much of the book's contents such title may have been meant to include; but it is now adopted here as a not inappropriate summarizing endorsement for the precious section which here follows. In doing so, Mr. Swinburne's example (in his Essay on Blake) has been followed, as regards pieces drawn from the Note-book.

The contents of the present section are derived partly from the Note-book in question, and partly from another small autograph collection of different matter, somewhat more fairly copied. The poems have been reclaimed, as regards the first-mentioned source, from as chaotic a mass as could well be imagined; amid which it has sometimes been necessary either to omit, transpose, or combine, so as to render available what was very seldom found in a final state. And even in the pieces drawn from the second source specified above, means of the same kind have occasionally been resorted to, where they seemed to lessen obscurity or avoid redundance. But with all this, there is nothing throughout that is not faithfully Blake's own.

One piece in this series (The Two Songs) may be regarded as a different version of the Human Abstract, occurring in the Songs of Experience. This new form is certainly the finer one, I think, by reason of its personified character, which adds greatly to the force of the impression produced. It is, indeed, one of the finest things. Blake ever did, really belonging, by its vivid completeness, to the order of perfect short poems,-never a very large band, even when the best poets are ransacked to recruit it. Others among the longer poems of this section, which are, each in its own way, truly admirable, are Broken Love, Mary, and Auguries of Innocence.