gs of Innocence_, or the lyrics he wished to call
'The Ideas of Good and Evil,' but when one reads those 'Prophetic Works'
in which he spoke confusedly and obscurely because he spoke of things for
whose speaking he could find no models in the world about him. He was a
symbolist who had to invent his symbols; and his counties of England, with
their correspondence to tribes of Israel, and his mountains and rivers,
with their correspondence to parts of a man's body, are arbitrary as some
of the symbolism in the _Axel_ of the symbolist Villiers De L'Isle Adam is
arbitrary, while they mix incongruous things as _Axel_ does not. He was a
man crying out for a mythology, and trying to make one because he could
not find one to his hand. Had he been a Catholic of Dante's time he would
have been well content with Mary and the angels; or had he been a scholar
of our time he would have taken his symbols where Wagner took his, from
Norse mythology; or have followed, with the help of Prof. Rhys, that
pathway into Welsh mythology which he found in 'Jerusalem'; or have gone
to Ireland--and he was probably an Irishman--and chosen for his symbols
the sacred mountains, along whose sides the peasant still sees enchanted
fires, and the divinities which have not faded from the belief, if they
have faded from the prayers of simple hearts; and have spoken without
mixing incongruous things because he spoke of things that had been long
steeped in emotion; and have been less obscure because a traditional
mythology stood on the threshold of his meaning and on the margin of his
sacred darkness. If 'Enitharmon' had been named Freia, or Gwydeon, or
Danu, and made live in Ancient Norway, or Ancient Wales, or Ancient
Ireland, we would have forgotten that her maker was a mystic; and the hymn
of her harping, that is in _Vala_, would but have reminded us of many
ancient hymns.

'The joy of woman is the death of her beloved,
Who dies for love of her,
In torments of fierce jealousy and pangs of adoration.
The lover's night bears on my song,
And the nine spheres rejoice beneath my powerful control.

They sing unwearied to the notes of my immortal hand.
The solemn, silent moon
Reverberates the long harmony sounding upon my limbs.
The birds and beasts rejoice and play,
And every one seeks for his mate to prove his inmost joy.

Furious and terrible they rend the nether deep,
The deep lifts up his rugged head,
And lost in infinite ho