Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
- We begin this section with another mind-blowing declaration. The speaker has found three errors, which he blames on "All Bibles or sacred codes" (2.1).
- These errors are as follows:
- 1. Body and Soul are separate things.
- 2. Evil comes from the Body and Reason comes from the Soul.
- 3. God will punish all humanity for following Evil ("his Energies").
- All that is totally bunk, according to the speaker. Instead:
- 1. The Body and the Soul are one and the same.
- 2. "Energy is the only life, and is from the Body" (2.7). In other words, the Body is what gives us our Energy, so it's not truly Evil. Also, Reason is what puts the breaks on our pursuits of Energy.
- 3. That's too bad, because "Energy is Eternal Delight" (2.8)—just don't go overboard on those Red Bulls, gang.
- The speaker then goes on to bust on "those who restrain desire" (2.9). If you do that, it's only because your desire wasn't strong enough in the first place.
- When this happens, Reason takes over and runs everything.
- Want to see an example of this? Our speaker suggests you read John Milton's Paradise Lost
- The force of Reason that's in charge "is called Messiah" (2.11), but Milton's Messiah is actually Satan.
- From the pro-God point of view, the fall of Satan was Reason kicking desire out of Heaven, but our speaker sees this as Satan rebuilding his own Heaven down below.
- The speaker also refers to the Gospel of John—in which God sends down the Holy Spirit to teach humanity—as a mixing of Reason with a desire for new ideas.
- By this token, according to the speaker, Satan actually became Jehovah after the death of Jesus.
- In essence, the speaker is saying that it's more than just good and reason up above, evil and desire down below. You need desire to help you take advantage of divine wisdom, which is why Satan is not such a bad guy after all.
- You know who else was a good guy? Mr. John Milton—that's who. Our speaker also notes that Milton wrote in a restrained way ("in fetters") when he wrote about God and angels, but that he was more free when writing about the Devil (2.18). That's because Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it."
- That sounds bad, but remember that Milton was using creative Energy to put his book together—not unlike a certain William Blake is doing, right?