Therefore I might call myself, if I
wished, a kind of Christian (of the Church of Blake and Shelley) but
assuredly in no sense a theist." [Footnote: Edmund Gosse, _Swinburne_,
p. 309.]
Nothing less than complete fusion of the three worlds spoken of by
Goethe, will satisfy the poet. If fusion of the outer world and the
other world results in the pantheistic color of the poet's religion, the
third element, the inner world, makes it imperative that the poet's
divinity should be a personal one, no less, in fact, than a deification
of his own nature. This tendency of the poet to create God in his own
image is frankly acknowledged by Mrs. Browning in prayer to the "Poet
God." [Footnote: _A Vision of Poets_.]
Of all English writers, William Blake affords the clearest revelation of
the poet's instinctive attitude, because he is most courageous in
carrying the implications of poetic egotism to their logical conclusion.
In the _Prophetic Books_, in particular, Blake boldly expresses all
that is implicit in the poet's yearning for a religion which will not
humble and thwart his nature, but will exalt and magnify it.
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