William Blake: A Critical Essay

ADAM. It is all a vain delusion of the all-creative Imagination. Eve, come away, and let us not believe these vain delusions. Abel is dead, and Cain slew him; We shall also die...

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First then for the _Songs of Innocence and Experience_. These at a first naming recall only that incomparable charm of form in which they first came out clothed, and hence vex t...

_The Book of Thel_, first in date and simplest in tone of the prophecies, requires less comment than the others. This poem is as the one sister, feeblest if also fairest, among...

who had ears to hear and lips to reveal the music and the splendour and the secret of the high places of verse. Again, in a changed century, when the reading and warbling world...

All that is worth recollection in the little play of "Edward the Third" has been here reproduced with a judicious care in adjusting and rejecting. Blake had probably never seen...

What concerns us at present is, that there grew up between Blake and Wainwright an intimacy not unpleasing to commemorate. An artist in words, in oils, and in drugs, Wainwright...

[45] The words "female" and "reflex" are synonymous in all Blake's writings. What is feminine in its material symbol is derivative in its spiritual significance; "there is no su...

"'John for disobedience bled; But you can turn the stones to bread. God's high king and God's high priest Shall plant their glories in your breast If Caiaphas you will obey, If...

"Fortune favours the brave, old proverbs say; But not with money; that is not the way: Turn back, turn back; you travel all in vain; Turn through the iron gate down Sneaking Lane."

Such is the radical "idea" of the poem; and as to details, we are to remember that "modesty" with Blake means a timid and tacit prurience, and "humility" a mistrustful and menda...

From the ensuing divisions of the book we shall give full extracts; for these detached sections have a grace and coherence which we shall not always find in Blake; and the crude...

Such points as these do, above most others, deserve, demand, and reward the trouble of clearing up; and these once understood, much that seemed the aimless unreflecting jargon o...

"The lamenting voice of Ahania weeping upon the void and round the Tree of Fuzon. Distant in solitary night her voice was heard, but no form had she; but her tears from clouds e...

Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce, And dost not know the garment from the man; Every harlot was a virgin once, Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan.

'I saw 'em kindle with desire, While with soft sighs they blew the fire; Saw the approaches of their joy, He growing more fierce and she less coy; Saw how they mingled melting r...

Then follows the incarnation and descent into earth and hell of Milton, who represents here the redemption by inspiration, working in pain and difficulty before the expiration o...

Throughout the Prophecy of _Europe_ the fervent and intricate splendours of text and decoration are whirled as it were and woven into spreading webs or twining wheels of luminou...

And so, as with fire and thunder--"thunder of thought, and flames of fierce desire"--is this _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ at length happily consummated; the prophet, as a ferve...

To attest by word or work the identity of things which never can become identical, was no part of Blake's object in life. What work it fell to his lot to do, that, having faith...

The most singular designs ever attempted by any artist. This book is a fund of amusement. So crammed is it with pictures that even the contents are adorned with thirty-three ill...

In 1808 the illustrations to "Blair's Grave" appeared, and found some acceptance; a success on which the shameful soul of Cromek fed exultingly and fattened scandalously. The ra...

We must here be allowed space to interpolate a word of the briefest possible comment on the practical side of Blake's character. No man ever lived and laboured in hotter earnest...

All this was not a mere matter of creed or opinion, much less of decoration or ornament to his work. It was, as we said, his element of life, inhaled at every breath with the co...

(This stanza ought probably to be omitted; but I retain it as being carefully numbered for insertion by Blake: though he by some evident slip of mind or pen has put it before th...

And secondly we are to recollect this; that these books are not each a set of designs with a text made by order to match, but are each a poem composed for its own sake and with...

The following misprints have been corrected: "has" corrected to "hast" (page 153) "Thetoormon" corrected to "Theotormon" (page 234) "woamn" corrected to "woman" (footnote 19) "r...