can come because of those who sleep:" made to shelter, before they "pass away in winter," the temporary emanations "which trembled exceedingly neither could they live, because the life of man was too exceeding unbounded." Of the incarnation and descent of Ololon, of the wars and prophecies of Milton, and of all the other Felpham visions here put on record, we shall say no more in this place; but all these things are written in the Second Book. The illustrative work is also noble and worth study in all ways. One page for example is covered by a design among the grandest of Blake's. Two figures lie half embraced, as in a deadly sleep without dawn of dream or shadow of rest, along a bare slant ledge of rock washed against by wintry water. Over these two stoops an eagle balanced on the heavy-laden air, with stretching throat and sharpened wings, opening beak, and eyes full of a fierce perplexity of pity. All round the greenish and black slope of moist sea-cliff the weary tidal ripple plashes and laps, thrusting up as it were faint tongues and listless fingers tipped with foam. On an earlier page, part of the text of which we have given, crowd and glitter all shapes and images of insect or reptile life, sprinkling between line and margin keen points of jewel-
material mystery and become subject to sensuous form and likeness in the body of the shadow of death. This glorious passage, almost to be matched for wealth of sound, for growth and gradation of floral and musical splendour, for mastery of imperial colour, even against the great interlude or symphony of flowers in Maud, was not cast at random into the poem, but has also a "soul" or meaning in it—though the ways of seeing and understanding are somewhat too closely guarded by "Og and Anak." Heading it as an excerpt indeed one need hardly wish to see beyond the form or material figure. That "innumerable dance" of tree and flower and herb is not unfit for comparison with the old ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα of the waves of the sea.
