210 Ideals in the Modern World
He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,
And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.
He taught the implicated orbits woven
Of the wide wandering stars; and how the sun
Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye
Gazes not on the interlunar sea:
He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,
The tempest- wingèd chariots of the Ocean,
And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then
Were built, and through their snow- like columns fl owed
The warm winds, and the azure ether shone,
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
(238)To Shelley and to Blake the proof of erotic life lies in the creative
force that it releases. It ought not to make one passive and compla-
cent. True love does not make us happy—if we equate happiness
with contentment. It is a goad to further creation—an inducement
to what Blake would call “ mental fi ght.”
Love is a way through the Self the poets show us, but in time it
can become a refuge of the Self. Love has to be the door to creating
Fr ye’s second world, or it is not true Romantic love. In the “Cr ystal
Cabinet” Blake brilliantly anatomizes what happens when a young
poet falls in passive self- delighting love— love that does not lead
toward creation, but easy plea sure:
The Maiden caught me in the Wild
Where I was dancing merrily
She put me into her Cabinet
And Lock’d me up with a golden Key