Tiriel at the hour of his death realized why his paradise was fallen, and he had found nought but the drear sandy plain. His description of his own upbringing, shocking as it is, is that of the great bulk of mankind. The instant a child is born, the dull, blind father stands ready to form the infant head; and if the child, like Blake, has vision, the father, like Mr Blake, uses the whip to rouse the sluggish senses to act and to scourge off all youthful fancies. "Then walks the weak infant in sorrow, compelled to number footsteps Upon the sand. And when the drone has reached his crawling length, Black berries appear that poison all round him. Such was Tiriel Compelled to pray repugnant, and to humble the immortal spirit; Till I am subtle as a serpent in a paradise, Consuming all, both flowers and fruits, insects and warbling birds." Blake was thinking of his father and his own early whippings. But really fathers are not absolutely necessary, for the mother, the nurse, the elder sister, and the public school, can do the job a great deal more effectually. The other poem, _The Book of Thel_, 1789, is Swedenborgian throughout. Thel, youngest daughter of the Seraphim, bewails the transitoriness of life and all beautiful things, herself included. Then the _humble_ Lily of the Valley, a little Cloud, a Worm, and a Clod of Clay, all in their respective ways preach to her that "Everything that lives, lives not alone nor for itself." When she has reached the utter selflessness of a Clod of Clay, then only will she be able to behold steadfastly the seeming transitoriness of youth and beautiful things; seeming, for like the lowly lily they melt to flourish in eternal vales. Here Blake endorses the Swedenborgian selflessness, and extols the Swedenborgian lowliness, modesty, and humility. Swedenborg believed in no doctrine of self-realization. To him the self was always an evil till lost in the Lord. It was the remains in him of German mysticism. Blake slowly and surely came to set a high value on the true self. But unlike the more modern preacher of self-realization, he believed that a man found his real self only after he had given himself passionately to Jesus the eternal life and the eternal imagination. Then he was no longer to value the humility and modesty attached to selflessness. Their place was to be taken by a new kind of humility and a new kind of modesty of such flaming quality, that he wished to drop the old names and find others that more nearly described their sovereign reality. Thel is finally invited by the matron Clay to enter her house, with the assurance that she may return. Immediately the terrific Porter of the Eternal Gates lifted the _northern_ bar.