Note 1. I heard an Angel singing] A variant version of ‘The Human Image’, engraved under the title ‘The Human Abstract’ in the Songs of Experience 15 At his curse] Thus he sang and MS. 1st rdg. del. 16 Here, as the MS. indicates, the poem originally ended, Blake afterwards adding a fifth stanza:
Down [at first And down] pour’d the heavy rain
Over the new-reap’d grain,
And Mercy and Pity and Peace descended;
The Farmers were ruined and harvest was ended—
and again marking the completion of the piece by a fresh terminal line. This entire stanza was afterwards deleted, and is followed by several attempts at a new couplet, rehandling in the original metre the theme of Mercy, Pity, Peace, all of which were cancelled with the exception of the final reading:
And Miscry’s increase.
Is Mercy, Pity, Peace.
These lines seem intended to form the final couplet of v, and Swinburne doubtless interprets rightly the author’s intention in appending them to the first deleted couplet:
Down pour’d the heavy rain
Over the new-reap’d grain,
and printing this additional stanza in the form in which it appears, in square brackets, in my text. [back]
