— 12 —
"No one knows what the life of man is, unless he
knows that it is love."
(Margical notes to Swedenborg's "Angelic Wisdom".)
In nearly all his poems he sings of love in one of its many aspects; in the "Songs of Innocence" the divine love is dwelled upon in The Lamb, The Divine Image, On Another's Sorrow. In the Songs of Experience Love appears in its earthly garb, the temptations and struggles of love are put forth.
"For the strife of Love is the abysmal strife,
And the word of Love is the word of life."
He likes to dwell on the contrast of divine and human love. In his poem the Clod and the Pebble, or in William Bond, a very mystical poem interpreted in a different way by Edwin J. Ellis, Charles A. Swinburne, and other Blake commentators, the last two stanzas are:
"I thought Love lived in the hot sunshine,
But oh, he lives in the moony light!
I thought Love lived in the heat of day,
But sweet Love is the comforter of night.
Seek Love in the pity of others' woe.
In the gentle relief of another's care,
In the darkness of night and the winter's snow,
In the naked and outcast, seek Love there!
And in his Prophetic Books, he, to use his own words, does nothing but
"Weaves into dreams the sexual strife
And mourns over the web of life."
At Blake's death many unpublished, or rather unknown Mss. were found, but Frederick Tatham, considering these to lessen the fame of his friend by the heretical opinions they
