Blake's couplet, in three lectures (1119, 1324, 2044 - where it is the title), and it is the sentence Neville puts against his own past when he is asked why the gift came to him. The affliction is granted, not denied: he certainly put me through the paces, and it has not yet been revealed to him what the furnaces were. What the couplet supplies is the two things he needs and cannot get from the furnace image alone - that the ends are secret, so no account of the suffering is owed or available, and that the outcome is friendship rather than acquittal. At 2044 he sets it beside the 119th Psalm, which says the same in the first person and in order: before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep thy word; it is good for me that I was afflicted; this is my comfort in my affliction, that thy promise gives me life. Keep it beside M584, which holds Isaiah's furnace of affliction and the refusal that follows it - for my own sake I do it, for how should my glory be given to another.