Beyond Innocence

Wikisource
Book of Thel
Image from Final Page

This is an extract (3) from Chapter Five (GOD) of Ram Horn'd With Gold by Larry Clayton.

Early Images of God

'Songs of Innocence' and 'The Book of Thel' both composed shortly before
'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell', contain perhaps the most exquisite images of a
benevolent God to be found in modern literature. Written by a man of 34, they vividly
evoke the faith of a child like mind unsullied by the world. Writing them Blake performed
the imaginative feat of a supreme artist able in vision to project his psyche back to the
days before the Fall. Actually at this stage of his life Blake already had a
keen awareness of the Fall, a mind deeply shadowed by it; but no trace
of the shadows appears in these exquisite sacrifices of praise. It's as
if with prescience that his art will shortly be submerged in visions of
fallen man and a fallen God, he paused for one preliminary glimpse of
the Golden Age.

Book of Thel, Plate 1, (E 3)
"The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny flocks.
All but the youngest; she in paleness sought the secret air.
To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day:
Down by the river of Adona her soft voice is heard:
And thus her gentle lamentation falls like morning dew.
O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water?
Why fade these children of the spring? born but to smile & fall.
Ah! Thel is like a watry bow. and like a parting cloud.
Like a reflection in a glass. like shadows in the water.
Like dreams of infants. like a smile upon an infants face,
Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music in the air;
Ah! gentle may I lay me down, and gentle rest my head.
And gentle sleep the sleep of death. and gentle hear the voice
Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time."

That pause brought a precious gift to mankind. The faith of the Clod can hardly be improved upon. The God in "The Little Black Boy" not so much in the imagined father as in the spirit of the child, has been a candle in the life of many a hard pressed pilgrim tempted to curse the darkness.

After 'Songs of Innocence' begin the curses. It may be worthwhile to curse the darkness if thereby we make someone aware of it. This was Blake's aim, like that of most social prophets. Dickens rubs our noses in the darkness over and over, and we're better men for having read him. Like Dickens' novels Blake's poems are full of darkness. From 1790 to 1800 he directed our thoughts to the fallen God whom we worship, who promotes the darkness and calls it light.

Few or no specimens of humanity would stoop so low as to consign a fellow man to everlasting torment; any Being imagined to do such a thing must be at best subhuman. The worship of such a being is devil worship. In a poem on the French Revolution Blake descended to the crudest vulgarity in trying to put such a theological notion in its rightful place:

Satiric Verses, From Blake's Notebook, (E 500)
"The King awoke on his couch of gold
 As soon as he heard these tidings told ...
Then he swore a great and solemn Oath:
"To kill the people I am loth,
"But if they rebel, they must go to hell:
"They shall have a Priest and a passing bell."
Then old Nobodaddy aloft Farted and belch'd and cough'd,
And said, "I love hanging and drawing and quartering
 "Every bit as well as war and slaughtering.
 "Damn praying and singing "Unless they will bring in
 "The blood of ten thousand by fighting or swinging."

.