With an Olympian audacity Blake writes, "When this Verse was first dictated to me, I considered a monotonous cadence like that used by Milton and Shakespeare, and all writers of English blank verse, derived from the modern bondage of rhyming, to be a necessary and indispensable part of verse. But I soon found that in the mouth of a true orator, such monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rhyme itself. I therefore have produced a variety in every line, both of cadences and number of syllables. Every word and every letter is studied and put into its place; the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific parts, the mild and gentle for the mild and gentle parts, and the prosaic for the inferior parts; all are necessary to each other; Poetry fettered, fetters the human race." Self-assertion such as this is the apology for arts like those of Strauss and Walt Whitman, and our very admiration for Blake's youthful lyrical gift compels us to lament that his muse was brought at last, after those early days of soaring flight, to wading through such quagmires of so-called poetry as this and the ensuing book. Mysticism had engulfed the poet in its dim cloud, though poetic phrases and passages like crystal dew glitter amid the gloom. The "Jerusalem" may be regarded as an attempted poetic statement of Blake's mystic philosophy regarding the development of humanity and its various states. I give you the end of a golden string Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven's gate Built in Jerusalem's wall,