projected Motto to the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which editors have left hitherto in manuscript:
The good are attracted by men's perceptions,
And think not for themselves
Till Experience teaches them how to catch
And to cage the Fairies and Elves.
And then the Knave begins to snarl,
And the Hypocrite to howl;
And all his[1] good friends show their private ends,
And the Eagle is known from the Owl."
Experience must do the work of innocence as soon as conscience begins to take the place of instinct, reflection of perception; but the moment experience begins upon this work, men raise against her the conventional
- ↑ "His," the good man's: this lax piece of grammar (shifting from singular to plural and back again without much tangible provocation) is not infrequent with Blake, and would hardly be worth righting if that were feasible. A remarkable instance is but too patent in the final "chorus" of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Such rough licence is given or taken by old poets; and Blake's English is always beautiful enough to be pardonable where it slips or halts: especially as its errors are always those of a rapid lyrical style, never of a tortuous or verbose ingenuity: it stammers and slips occasionally, but never goes into convulsions like that of some later versifiers.
stanza forming by its rhymes an exact antiphonal complement to the end of the first Cradle Song.
When thy little heart does wake,
Then the dreadful lightnings break
From thy cheek and from thine eye,
O'er the youthful harvests nigh;
Infant wiles and infant smiles
Heaven and earth of peace beguiles."
The epithet "infant" has supplanted that of "female," which was perhaps better: as to the grammatical licence, Blake followed in that the Elizabethan fashion which made the rule of sound predominate over all others. The song, if it loses simplicity, seems to gain significance by this expansion of the dim original idea; and beauty by expression of the peril latent in a life whose smiles as yet breed no strife between friends, kindle no fire among the unripe shocks of growing corn; but whose words shall hereafter be as very swords, and her eyes as lightning; teterrima belli causa.
