Blake's four lines, which Neville uses to settle the virgin birth without arguing about biology: Whate'er is done to her she cannot know, And if you ask her she will swear it so. Whether 'tis good or evil none's to blame: No one can take the pride, no one the shame. The virgin is every man and woman, and the siring is done without their knowledge and without their consent - your Maker is your husband, so the one who made you is the one who sires you. That is why she can ask how can this thing be, seeing that I know not a man, and answer honestly: whatever was done to her she cannot know, and asked about it she will swear it so. And it is why the centuries of volumes condemning the birth as out of wedlock have missed it - since no one sired the child, no one can claim to have sired it, so no one can take the pride and, if it is a shame, no one the shame. Neville attaches the other half of the sign from Isaiah 7:14: Emmanuel is a token and not the event, the child is given a name as a token of deliverance, and the child himself is not the deliverer. A child of the every-man-is-the-virgin motif, which carries the doctrine; this one carries Blake's poem and the exoneration it performs.