THE following allusion by William Blake to John Milton has not been noted. Blake in ‘then She bore Pale desire’, c. 1780–3 (?), an early manuscript fragment, speaks of ‘Shame in a Mist’ (E 447:67, my emphasis).1 Blake’s enigmatic phrasing literally declares that Satan is ‘torn from his throne,’ a ‘Black . . . deed, most Black,’ and thus ‘Shame in a Mist Sat Round his [Satan’s] troubled head.’ Blake frequently dealt with such ironies, and his deliberately out-of-context word-play is a puzzlement, until it is understood that Blake restructures Book Twelve of Paradise Lost (626–32) in which Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden. Milton in his text paraphrases Genesis (3:24), in which winged Cherubim—with their whirling Sword of Fire that ‘turned every way’—drive ashamed Adam and Eve from Paradise, for these First Parents have committed mortal sin. It was a theme that interested Blake, for at a later period he illustrated the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden in two designs, after Paradise Lost, in both cases dramatically portraying the turbulent fire turning every way (Thomas and Butts sets, respectively; see Blake Archive). Therefore Milton’s moralizing Cherubim from their ‘fixt Station’ in the heavens precipitously descend ‘on the ground / Gliding meteorous, as Ev’ning Mist / Ris’n from a River o’er the marish [marsh]’.2 Decades later Blake again twists the semantics of Book Twelve of Paradise Lost, for in The Ghost of Abel (E 272), 1822, Blake’s winged Cherubim in the forgiving visions of ‘Elohim Jehovah … rolled apart trembling over / The Mercy Seat, each in his station fixt in the Firmament by Peace Brotherhood and Love’ (cf. Paradise Lost, XII, 251–54, my emphases). Milton’s Cherubim, with their Flaming Sword, signify the Punishment of Sins, while Blake’s Cherubim signify Forgiveness of Sins. Blake rejected the stern morality of Milton’s winged Cherubim, and Blake, in subsequent years, declared to Henry Crabb Robinson that Milton wished him (Blake) ‘to expose the falsehood of his [Milton’s] doctrine, taught in Paradise Lost—That Sexual intercourse arouse [sic] out of the Fall’ (Blake Records, 544).