What is now proved was once only imagined.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

The eagle is not so close to the sun as we are. For here we see run, a shadowing finger behind the sun.

And as for the birds of the air they have lost their nature. Thus we create our own darkened being, which man hath formed at first to be glorious.

But this is only the long imagined view, That they are prisoners of anchored time.

• William Blake