216 Ideals in the Modern World
the private and social Self hood. One can sometimes fear that the
harsh Romantic critiques of love— “La Belle Dame,” “The Crystal
Cabinet,” virtually all of Byron’s Don Juan— apply to all erotic life,
not merely to the fallen modalities of it.
But there is Blake. Blake does not seem to fall to the Spectre of
Self hood. In Milton and Jerusalem he persuasively dramatizes the
overcoming of Self, for himself and potentially for anyone who
wishes to join with him. And he enjoys that overcoming. He died,
we are told, a happy and fulfi lled man. In a letter from his deathbed
he w rote: “I have been ver y near the Gates of Death & have retur ned
very weak & an Old Man feeble and tottering, but not in Spirit &
Life, not in the Real Man The Imagination which Liveth for Ever.
In that I am stronger & stronger as this Foolish Body decays” (783).
The Romantic quest is not over— its possibilities are incompletely
explored, its validity far from deci ded. Is the Romantic quest ulti-
mately an aff air of Self or of Soul? We do not entirely know. But we
still live within its dangers and possibilities. Though the greatest
Romantic poems may have been written, we still need to discover
what the possibilities are in life for the fusion of love and imagina-
tion. As the rock and roll poet says: “ After the fi re, the fi re still
burns.”