William Blake Poet & Mystic

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William Blake Poet & Mystic

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So her's a couple of pieces by William Blake. But first here's a comment on Blake by Kenneth Rexroth which helps to sum up the Enigma Blake has become.

Kenneth Rexroth on Blake William Blake , Poems

Blake knew that his age was faced with a major crisis or climacteric of the interior life. He could diagnose the early symptoms of the world ill because he saw them as signs that man was being deprived of literally half his being. His Prophetic Books may be full of cosmological powers derived from the long Gnostic tradition of the emanation and fall of creation, but he is in fact concerned with the epic tragedy of mankind as it enters an epoch of depersonalization unequaled in history. It is not surprising that the followers of Carl Jung have been amongst the most revelatory expositors of Blake. He anticipates most of Jung’s diagnosis and prescription, and shares with him the same archetypal pattern or Olympiad of key symbolic figures. The reason is not to be found in some mysterious universal oversoul or undersoul. It is simply that human brains like human bodies are much alike, and men cope with those factors of the mind, or those powers and relationships in life, that cannot be handled by a quantitative rationalism in much the same way in all times and places, and most especially in crises of the society or the individual. Blake was not only right about the spiritual, intangible factors, the Guardians of the Soul, or the testers and judges of the Trials of the Soul in ancient mythologies, that are symbols of the struggles of the interior life and the achievement of true integration of the personality. He was also right about the external factors — the evils of the new factory system, of forced pauperism, of wage slavery, of child labor, and of the elevation of covetousness from the sin of the Tenth Commandment to the Golden Rule of a society founded on the cash nexus.

A generation before the birth of Marx, and before Hegel, he put his finger unerringly on the source of human self-alienation, and he analyzed its process and consequences in a way not to be matched until the mid-twentieth century.

...It is amusing that the Age of Reason thought Blake mad, for he is distinguished by an extraordinary sanity in a world in which men like him were being driven to the wall. No other poet of the main tradition of secession from modern civilization is so lucid or so conscious of his own logic of purpose

The Tyger by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

TYGER- William Blake
An absolutely magical short by Guilherme Marcondes of Brazil, based on a William Blake poem. Tyger blends puppetry, illustration, photography and CGI. Dreamy, mesmerizing, brilliant. Wow.

chimney sweeper william blake chimney sweeper by william blake as a nineteenth century english poet blake depicts the concept of (the ) child (or childhood) just after the industrial revolution- (children were seen as miniature adults and so could be used as cheap labour or were disciplined as if they had the same understanding and capabilities as adults)

Auguries of Innocence- William Blake

Man was made for Woe and Joy

Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to endless night

for more on William Blake see Poets.org/ William Blake and William Blake Archive Auguries of Innocence by William Blake .

Auguries of Innocence by William Blake To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.

A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.

Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.

The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer wandering here and there
Keeps the human soul from care.

The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.

The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.

He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.

Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.

The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from Slander's tongue.

The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy's foot.

The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.

A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.

Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.

Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
This is caught by females bright
And returned to its own delight.

The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes Revenge! in realms of death.

The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.

The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death.

He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.

The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply.

He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.

Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plough
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.

A riddle or the cricket's cry
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.

He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.

To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.

The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.

Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

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