"To this day they dwell In a lonely dell: Nor fear the wolfish howl Nor the lion's growl." _The Clod and the Pebble_ give the two contrary states of love. The clod proclaims the love that forgets itself in ministering to others; the pebble the love that would bind and devour all others, making them contribute to its own delight. _A Poison Tree_ shows how repressed things secrete poison. "I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow." The repressed anger ended in murder. Blake was sure that any passion repressed was equally fatal. _The Schoolboy_ gives the miserable experience that is thrust upon us all through the blind cruelty of those who would educate us. This experience is so contrary that nothing could be more calculated to crush native innocence, joy, and spring. "O! father and mother, if buds are nipped And blossoms blown away, And if the tender plants are stripped Of their joy in the springing day, By sorrow and care's dismay, How shall the summer arise in joy, Or the summer fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the blasts of winter appear?" How indeed? The question is to parents, schoolmasters, professors, priests. The conditions for young lives are created by those who would strangle life. Yet when experience has been its most contrary, even nailing its victim to a cross, just there is deliverance. "Whate'er is born of mortal birth Must be consumed with the earth, To rise from generation free." It was Blake's supreme experience that he had been set free from generation. It was by a re-generation, and that had come to him through the death of Jesus. "The death of Jesus set me free." The same year 1794 saw Blake spinning fast the special mythological web with which he was to clothe or strangle his vision. He had separated from all his spiritual teachers; but Swedenborg lived on in him much more than he owned or even recognized, and Ossian and Milton still governed his imagination. Milton's huge figures were imitated in the mythological figures which were to stalk about his universe to the end; Ossian's fantastic names, which always fascinated him, provoked others still more fantastic. By means of these uncouth dæmons he determined to set forth his own particular view of the cosmos, which, starting with eternity, was to fall into creation, and finally, after lightning, thunder, rolling clouds, and a sea of blood, accompanied by roarings, shrieks, and howlings, was to attain to salvation by a return to the divine order.