is good and for another thing day: nothing is good and nothing evil to all at once.
'The sea-fowl takes the wintry blast for a covering to her limbs,
And the wild snake the pestilence, to adorn him with gems and gold;
And trees and birds and beasts and men behold their eternal joy.
Arise, you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy!
Arise and drink your bliss! For everything that lives is holy.'
Thus every morning wails Oothoon, but Theotormon sits
Upon the margined ocean, conversing with shadows dire.
The daughters of Albion hear her woes, and echo back her sighs."
It may be feared that Oothoon has yet to wait long before Thetoormon will leave off "conversing with shadows dire;" nor is it surprising that this poem won such small favour; for had it not seemed inexplicable it must have seemed unbearable. Blake, as evidently as Shelley, did in all innocence believe that ameliorated humanity would be soon qualified to start afresh on these new terms after the saving advent of French and American revolutions. "All good things are in the West;" thence in the teeth of "Urizen" shall human deliverance come at length. In the same year Blake's prophecy of America came forth to proclaim this message over again. Upon this book we need not dwell so long; it has more of thunder and less of lightning than the former prophecies; more of sonorous cloud and less of explicit fire. The prelude, though windy enough, is among Blake's nobler myths: the divine spirit of rebellious redemption, imprisoned as yet by the gods of night and chaos, is fed and sustained in secret by the "nameless" spirit of the great western continent; nameless and shadowy, a daughter of chaos, till the day of their fierce and fruitful union.
