That is all very well, she seems to say, _you_ help to revive and nourish many creatures, but what do I do? I shall fade away like a little shining cloud. The lily then calls down a cloud, which appears in the bright likeness of a radiant youth in mid-air. The cloud tells her that when he passes away in an hour's time, "It is to manifold life, to love, and peace and raptures holy." He will wed the Dew, and linked together in a golden band they will "bear food to all our tender flowers." But Thel complains that she does nothing for any living thing, Without a use this shining woman lived, Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms. Then the "cloud reclined upon his airy throne" tells her that even that would prove her of great use and blessing, for Everything that lives Lives not alone nor for itself, and in token of the truth of what he says he calls the helpless worm, which appears to Thel as "an infant wrapped in the Lily's leaf." This lowest form of created life is cradled in a mother's love to Thel's surprise. The Clod of Clay appears to comfort its weeping babe and tells the wondering "beauty of the Vales of Har," that being herself the meanest of all things, yet nevertheless she is the bride of Him "who loves the lowly," and is the mother of all his children. Whereat Thel weeps to find life and love everywhere, even where she expected nothing but coldness and horror. Then "matron Clay," invites Thel to enter her house, saying that it is given her to enter and to return. So Thel entered into the secret regions of the grave, and passed on "till to her grave-plot she came and there she sat down, and heard a voice of sorrow" speak from out it. It is a wild blood-stilling cry that rises to her terrified ears, shrieking of the senses, their limits, their precious and their poisoning gifts--these only avenues through which life may be enjoyed, and by which eternity must be coloured. Nothing answers! there _is_ no answer? It is the old Faust riddle that has occupied the minds of thinkers since the beginning of time. It fretted Blake into a state of painful excitement. "The Virgin started from her seat, and with a shriek fled back unhindered till she came into the Vales of Har." The designs, of which there are but five, have still the serene and delicate air which belongs to Blake's youthful work. The colour is pure and thin, the outlines printed in faint Italian pink, and the effect of all is of things seen through a haze, which the sunshine is beginning to penetrate.