ABSTRACT
William Blake, in entitling his poem on the fall of man Vala, was indicating his central theme: man's lapse into a mistaken belief in the substantiality of the phenomena. The veiled goddess Nature was known to Blake in many versions and in images of great beauty. Psyche went weeping to her marriage, and "the maid that should be married did wipe her eyes with her veile"-an image perhaps echoed in Blake's "Why dost thou weep as Vala & wet thy veil with dewy tears." Sir William Jones might have written expressly for Blake his remarks upon the Hymn to Narayena, which he translated; for he applies its metaphysical distinctions to the Descartes-Locke-Berkeley theme of primary and secondary sensible qualities. Perhaps Wordsworth's poetry of nature Blake might have placed as the veil or Mundane Shell on the way to becoming the place of redemption and "awaking again into Eternity" through the contemplation of its beauty.
