The Keys of the Gates. Verses from 'The Gates of Paradise'. William Blake. 1908. The Poetical Works

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William Blake (1757–1827). The Poetical Works. 1908.

Verses from ‘The Gates of Paradise’

The Keys of the Gates


	The Keys 1 THE CATERPILLAR on the leaf
	Reminds thee of thy Mother’s grief.

1.	of the Gates My Eternal Man set in repose,
	The Female from his darkness rose;
	And she found me beneath a Tree,	5
	Mandrake, and in her Veil hid me.
	Serpent Reasonings us entice
	Of good and evil, virtue and vice,
2.	Doubt self-jealous, Watery folly;
3.	Struggling thro’ Earth’s melancholy;	10
4.	Naked in Air, in shame and fear;
5.	Blind in Fire, with shield and spear;
	Two-horn’d Reasoning, cloven fiction,
	In doubt, which is self-contradiction,
	A dark Hermaphrodite we stood—	15
	Rational truth, root of evil and good.
	Round me flew the Flaming Sword;
	Round her snowy Whirlwinds roar’d,
	Freezing her Veil, the Mundane Shell.
6.	I rent the Veil where the Dead dwell:	20
	When weary Man enters his Cave,
	He meets his Saviour in the grave.
	Some find a Female Garment there,
	And some a Male, woven with care;
	Lest the Sexual Garments sweet	25
	Should grow a devouring Winding-sheet.
7.	One dies! Alas! the Living and Dead!
	One is slain! and One is fled!
8.	In Vain-glory hatcht and nurst,
	By double Spectres, self-accurst.	30
	My Son! my Son! thou treatest me
	But as I have instructed thee.
9.	On the shadows of the Moon,
	Climbing thro’ Night’s highest noon;
10.	In Time’s Ocean falling, drown’d;	35
11.	In Agèd Ignorance profound,
	Holy and cold, I clipp’d the wings
	Of all sublunary things,
12.	And in depths of my dungeons
	Closed the Father and the Sons.	40
13.	But when once I did descry
	The Immortal Man that cannot die,
14.	Thro’ evening shades I haste away
	To close the labours of my day.
15.	The Door of Death I open found,	45
	And the Worm weaving in the ground:
16.	Thou’rt my Mother, from the womb;
	Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the tomb;
	Weaving to dreams the Sexual strife,
	And weeping over the Web of Life.	50

Note 1. Frontispiece. A caterpillar on an oak leaf. On a second leaf a human chrysalis like a babe in swaddling clothes. Legend: What is Man? with the lines:

The sun’s light, when he unfolds it,

Depends on the organ that beholds it.

  1. A woman under a weeping willow, holding a babe in her left arm, pulls a mandrake out of the ground by its hair. Legend: I found him beneath a tree.
  2. An old man, resting his hands on his knees, sits upon a rock beneath a leafless tree in a deluge of rain. The encroaching flood rises to his feet. Legend: Water, with the line: Thou waterest him with tears.
  3. Crouching figure of a man emerging from a crevice in a rock. Legend: Earth, with the line: He struggles into life.
  4. A man, nude, seated upon a white cloud, clasps his forehead with both hands and gazes steadfastly before him. Behind him the sky studded with stars. Legend: Air, with the line: On cloudy doubts and reasoning cares.
  5. A fiend, blind, standing in flames, armed with spear and shield. Legend: Fire, with the line: That end in endless strife—this and the three preceding lines forming a quatrain.
  5. In l. 4 ‘we’ is a revised rdg. of ‘I’ in the earlier issue.
  6. A cherub issuing from an egg. Legend: At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell.
  7. A boy in garden, hat in hand, chases flying fairy. A second fairy lies crushed at his feet. Legend: Alas! [the original inscription written in centre of page with the addition of the words on either side and below] What are these? … the Female Martyr! Is she also the Divine Image?
  8. An old man, seated, with a sword in right hand, leans sorrowfully on his elbow, averting his head from the figure of a joyfully departing youth, who threatens him with a dart. Legend: My son! my son!
  9. A man standing on edge of world prepares to mount a ladder reared against the crescent moon. Two lovers watch him. Legend: I want! I want!
  10. A man drowning in sea, with one arm upthrust, and head just disappearing beneath the waves. Legend: Help! Help!
  11. An old man wearing spectacles, seated under a tree, clips the wings of a boy who struggles to escape. Before him the setting sun. Legend: Aged Ignorance, with the line: Perceptive Organs closed, their Objects close.
  12. An old man (Count Ugolino) with his two sons and two grandsons in dungeon cell. Legend: Does thy God, O Priest, take such vengeance as this?
  13. A husband, wife, and two children, beside a bed on which lies a corpse, watch the ascending spirit of an old man who points upward. Legend: Fear and Hope are—Vision.
  14. A man with a staff in his hand strides along a country lane. Legend: The traveller hasteth in the evening.
  15. An old man, leaning on a crutch, passes through the gateway of a tomb. Legend: Death’s door.
  16. A woman in white cerements, seated on the ground in a burial crypt. A huge worm crawls around her feet. Legend: I have said to the worm: Thou art my mother and my sister. [back]

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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