Poetry

Here is Plate 2:Why should the mistress of the vales of Har, utter asigh.She ceasd & smild in tears, then sat down in hersilver shrine.Thel answerd. O thou little virgin of the peacefulvalley.Giving to those that cannot crave, the voiceless,the o'ertired. t Thy breath doth nourish the innocent lamb, he smellsthy milky garments, He crops thy flowers. while thou sittest smiling in his face, Wiping his mild and meekin mouth from all contagioustaints. Thy wine doth purify the golden honey, thyperfume,Which thou dost scatter on every little blade of

grass that springs

Revives the milked cow, & tames the fire-breathing steed.

But Thel is like a faint cloud kindled at the rising sun:

I vanish from my pearly throne, and who shall find my place.

Queen of the vales the Lilly answerd, ask the tender cloud,

And it shall tell thee why it glitters in the morning sky,

And why it scatters its bright beauty thro' the humid air.

Descend O little cloud & hover before the eyes of Thel.

The Cloud descended, and the Lilly bowd her modest head:

And went to mind her numerous charge among the verdant grass.

Plate 3 is made up almost entirely with text:

PLATE 3 II. O little Cloud the virgin said, I charge thee tell to me, Why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away: Then we shall seek thee but not find; ah Thel is like to thee. I pass away. yet I complain, and no one hears my voice. The Cloud then shew'd his golden bead & his bright form emerg'd, Hovering and glittering on the air before the face of Thel. O virgin know'st thou not. our steeds drink of the golden springs Where Luvah doth renew his horses: look'st thou on my youth, And fearest thou because I vanish and am seen no more. Nothing remains; O maid I tell thee, when I pass away, It is to tenfold life, to love, to peace, and raptures holy: Unseen descending, weigh my light wings upon balmy flowers; And court the fair eyed dew. to take me to her shining tent; The weeping virgin, trembling kneels before the risen sun, Till we arise link'd in a golden band, and never part; But walk united, bearing food to all our tender flowers Dost thou O little Cloud? I fear that I am not like thee; For I walk through the vales of Har. and smell the sweetest flowers; But I feed not the little flowers: I hear the warbling birds, But I feed not the warbling birds. they fly and seek their food; But Thel delights in these no more because I fade away, And all shall say, without a use this shining woman liv'd, Or did she only live. to be at death the food of worms. The Cloud reclind upon his airy throne and answer'd thus. Then if thou art the food of worms. O virgin of the skies, How great thy use. how great thy blessing; every thing that Lives not alone, nor for itself: fear not and I will call The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice. Come forth worm of the silent valley, to thy pensive queen. The helpless worm arose, and sat upon the Lillys leaf, And the bright Cloud saild on, to find his partner in the vale.

PLATE 4 Then Thel astonish'd view'd theWorm upon its dewy bed.Art thou a Worm? image of weakness. artthou but a Worm?I see thee like an infant wrapped inthe Lillys leaf:Ah weep not little voice, thou can'stnot speak.but thou can'st weep;Is this a Worm? I see thee lay helpless& naked: weeping,And none to answer, none to cherishthee with mothers smiles.The Clod of Clay heard the Worms voice,& raisd her pitying head;She bowd over the weeping infant, andher life exhal'dIn milky fondness, then on Thel shefix'd her humble eyes.O beauty of the vales of Har. we live

not for ourselves,

Thou seest me the meanest thing, and so

I am indeed;

My bosom of itself is cold. and of itself is dark,

PLATE 5 But he that loves the lowly, pours hisoil upon my head.And kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands around my breast.And says; Thou mother of my children,I have loved thee.And I have given thee a crown thatnone can take awayBut how this is sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know, I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yetI live and love.The daughter of beauty wip'd her pitying tears with her whiteveil,And said. Alas! I knew not this, and therefore did I weep:That God would love a Worm I knew, and punish the evil footThat wilful, bruis'd its helpless form: but that he cherish'ditWith milk and oil, I never knew; and therefore did I weep,And I complaind in the mild air, because I fade away,And lay me down in thy cold bed, and leave my shining lot.

Queen of the vales, the matron Clay answerd; I heard thy sighs.

And all thy moans flew o'er my roof. but I have call'd them down:

Wilt thou O Queen enter my house. 'tis given thee to enter,

And to return; fear nothing. enter with thy virgin feet.

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Notes:

Whose speaking here? Why the Clod of Clay! Plate 5 takes up right where Plate 6 ended.Blake spoke of the Clod of Clay later in The Clod and the Pebble. We learn in the Bible that man is made in the image of God, and made of the earth.

The image shows Thel sitting among the flowers with folded arms looking down at two young figures: a woman and an infant. Who might they be? Why the Clod of Clay and the Worm.

(For Blake the Worm was a very significant metaphor. At Gates of Paradise

we read: "I have said to the Worm, Thou art my mother & my sister")

"Thel, with her skirt wide..watches the naked matron and the naked infant with outflung arms...who face each other with nothing to fear---

to apply words which the matron uses to encourage Thel herself."

(Erdman, The Illuminated Blake, page 39)

Plate 6PLATE 6:The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown;She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous rootsOf every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen.She wanderd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listningDolours & lamentations: waiting oft beside a dewy graveShe stood in silence. listning to the voices of the ground,Till to her own grave plot she came, & there she sat down.And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit.Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile!

Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn,

Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?

Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits & coined gold!

Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?

Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?

Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror trembling & affright.

Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy!

Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?

The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek.

Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har

The End (Page 6 of Erdman)

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Notes:

The northern bar: From the beginning of time Eternity and

Time are the primary divisions of kinds of reality. Materalists

have considered Reality to be in Time, while spiritually minded

people consider that the primary Reality resides in Eternity.

Thel has been living in 'Paradise' (called the 'vales of Har'),

but she wants to have a look at the other side. The 'Northern

Bar' opened the 'eternal gates' allowing Thel to 'have a look'

Blake likely had several sources for the 'northern bar', but

none better than one of his favorite English poets. The Faerie

Queene by Edmund Spenser includes these lines:

"It cited was in fruitful soul of old

And girt in with two walls on either side

The one of iron, the other of bright gold

That none might thorough breake, nor over-stride;

And double gates it had which opened wide,

By which both in and out men might pass.

The one faire and fresh, the other old and dride:"

This has been described as the northern and southern bar.

Plate 6 of Thel describes what she saw there and how she reacted.

She saw the 'the land unknown', the 'land of sorrows & of tears'

(commonly known as 'this vale of tears'), 'the land of clouds'.

Well she didn't think much of it.

Blake gave another instance of that (nymphatic) reaction in the

Sea of Time and Space; there you see the northern stairway with

one nymph vigorously climbing the stairs against the stream of

those headed for the 'sea'.

Thel came many years before the Arlington Tempera, but the idea,

the concept had not changed. In Blake's myth those in Eternity

may choose to come down into material life. In fact the story

(like the story of the Bible) concerns the Fall and the Return.

You might say that Thel chose not to fall. The rest of us are

here because we fell.

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Scholars see a close relationship between Thel and the Fable of

Cupid and Psyche. The influence of the Greek myth has been seen

in many of Blake's creations. In particular Irene Chayes of

Silver Springs MD wrote an essay called 'The Presence of Cupid

and Psyche, published in Blake's Visionary Forms Dramatic. She

dealt comprensively with the influence on Blake of the poem.

Among many other subjects she discussed is the relationship evident

betwen Thel and Psyche; both ventured a descent to the world and a return

to Paradise. Psyche fared better than Thel: she returned to be deified by

her lover, while Thel went back only to the lonely vals of Har.

Ideas of life, death, world, heaven, etc. fill Blake's works.

Here's a poem he wrote:

[Dedication to Blake's Illustrations to Blair's Grave, printed 1808]

TO THE QUEEN

The Door of Death is made of Gold,

That Mortal Eyes cannot behold;

But, when the Mortal Eyes are clos'd,

And cold and pale the Limbs repos'd,

The Soul awakes; and, wond'ring, and sees

In her mild Hand the golden Keys:

The Grave is Heaven's golden Gate,

And rich and poor around it wait;

O Shepherdess of England's Fold,

Behold this Gate of Pearl and Gold!

(Erdman 480)

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Marriage of Heaven and Hell

America, a Prophecy

The Everlasting Gospel

Milton

Jerusalem

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The first lesson in a Blake primer might well be Songs of Innocence. Looking at that we soon come to The Lamb:

• Little lamb, who made thee? Dos't thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, who made thee? Does thou know who made thee? Little lamb, I'll tell thee; Little lamb, I'll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is mild, He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little lamb, God bless thee! Little lamb, God bless thee!

Some might consider that too simplistic to be meaningful, but many people have found great meaning in it. Look for example at a discussion by Ralph Dumain.

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The next one is a favorite of many social liberals:

The Little Black Boy

• • My mother bore me in the southern wild,

  • And I am black, but O! my soul is white;

  • White as an angel is the English child,

  • But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

  • My mother told me underneath a tree,

  • And sitting down before the heat of day,

  • She took me on her lap and kissed me,

  • And pointing to the east, began to say:

  • "Look on the rising sun: there God does live,

  • And gives His light, and gives His heat away;

  • And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

  • Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

  • "And we are put on earth a little space,

  • That we may learn to bear the beams of love;

  • And the black bodies and this sunburnt face

  • Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

  • "For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,

  • The cloud will vanish; we shall hear His voice,

  • Saying: Come out from the grove, my love and care,

  • And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice."

  • This did my mother say, and kissed me;

  • And thus I say to little English boy:

  • When I from black and he from white cloud free,

  • And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

  • I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear

  • To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;

  • And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

  • And be like him, and he will then love me.

This is a double whammy! Very profound spiritual and mystical truth, plus a strong plug for social justice. Both of these facets informed Blake's personality for his entire life.

The The Chimney Sweeper gives a vivid picture of the terrible oppression of children in Blake's England.

Finally look at The Divine Image:

• To Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love

• All pray in their distress;

• And to these virtues of delight

• Return their thankfulness.

• For Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love Is God, our father dear,

• And Mercy, pity, Peace and Love Is Man, his child and care.

• For Mercy has a human heart, Pity, a human face,

• And Love, the human form divine,

• And Peace, the human dress.

• Then every man of every clime

• That prays in his distress,

• Prays to the human form divine,

• Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

• And all must love the human form in heathen, turk or jew.

• Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.

• And here is Infant Joy

• 'I have no name;

• I am but two days old.

• What shall I call thee?

• I happy am, Joy is my name.'

• Sweet joy befall thee!

• Pretty joy! Sweet joy, but two days old.

• Sweet joy I call thee: Thou dost smile,

• I sing the while; Sweet joy befall thee!

• One of the thousand thousand babes (xxxii) that gambol around the Heavenly

• Father (from The Faerie Queen).

Now look at a work that shows the other side of all these 'innocent' poems,

the Songs of Experience, and begin with a statement that all the lovers of sexual liberation most dearly love. It's called Earth's Answer. Of course if that's your primary (and perhaps only) response, you've missed the point entirely. It's really not about sex per se but about the dead hand of conventions of all sorts that condemns people to a life of mediocrity. If you pursue 'men' in the third verse, the note indicates that that interpreter perceived "selfish father of men" to mean Adam, lamenting at the curse which followd the Fall.

Probably the most often read and perhaps most significant of these poems in Tyger,Tyger. With this poem in mind Northrup Frye wrote his fantastic book called Fearful Symmetry.

• • 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 seize the fire?

  • And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

  • And when thy heart begin to beat, What dread hand? and 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?

Focus on this question: "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" Food for considerable thought! At the very least it must call into question many of the most conventional ideas about God.

This could be the fundamental spiritual issue for Blake throughout his life, and indeed of the lives of a great many of us: What about it, God; are you a killer as well as a lover? Many, many pages of Blake's poetry seem to address this fundamental question.

If you're a person of sensitivity, some of these Songs of Experience will break your heart. Look at London.The last line of verse 2 contains that famous phrase ('mind forg'd manacles) that appears so often in my blog. The more you think about that term, the more connotations it will come to have.

But consider that the nature of our lives is that our minds are chained to numberless conventions of philsophy, religion, economics, government, etc. etc. Blake's primary endeavour is to set us free from these shackles that confine our daily lives to mediocrity-- using perhaps 2% of our God given brains. (It's not about giving up the ego; it's about giving up the thousands of prejudices, fears, etc that we carry around as baggage like poor Christian in Pilgrims Progress.)

The Garden of Love will appeal to the "free lovers", but it's more significant to me with the prophetic awareness of what has happened to the God of Love at the hands of the established church.

Thel is the story of a young girl going from Innocence to Experience. She didn't like what she saw, so she fled back to the place she came from.

In the vales of Har the youngest of the seraphim wanders down to the river of Adona where she converses with the Lily of the Valley, the Cloud, the worm, and the clod of clay.

The clod of clay has a special significance in Blake's cast of characters. Little enough in itself it yet affirms the existence of glory in the humblest place. Speaking to Thel:

• "O Beauty of the vales of Har! we live not for ourselves.

• Thou seest me, the meanest thing, and so I am indeed.

• My bosom of itself is cold, and of itself is dark;

• But He, that loves the lowly, pours His oil upon my head,

• And kisses me, and binds His nuptial bands around my breast,

• And says: "Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee,

• And I have given thee a crown that none can take away."

• But how this is, sweet Maid, I know not, and I cannot know;

• I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love.'

The clod of clay invites Thel to take flesh and experience what she has missed in her innocence. After her conversations we read in section 4 (plate 6):

"The eternal gates' terrific Porter lifted the northern bar:" Thel enters the life of the flesh, "A land of sorrows and of tears where never smile was seen." At this point Blake proceeds to denounce a sense based life, after which Thel "with a shriek fled back unhinder'd till she came into the vales of Har."

With Thel Blake asks an important question:

Is life worthwhile?-- a question asked emphatically in the negative by Eastern Religion, but more often in the positive by life affirming Christians.

In Thel Blake asks the question, but doesn't answer it. According to Raine (page 27) he answered it with a statement to Vala of her lover which Blake recorded near the end of Night 9 of The Four Zoas:

• Rise sluggish Soul why sit here, why dost thou sit & weep?

• Yon Sun shall wax old & decay but thou shalt ever flourish. The fruit shall ripen & fall down & the flowers consume away. But thou shalt still survive. Arise! O dry thy dewy tears.

(If you feel like working with Thel Ed Friedlander's study provides much information:

America, a Prophecy

This early work deals with America's war for independence. (Incidentally a fairly large number of liberal minded Englishmen supported the American Revolution, as did Blake here.) He used American figures as well as French ones in this paean to revolution. The most notable part is Plate 6 where he celebrates the end of the age:

• The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;

• The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;

• The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd,

• Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!

• Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst.

• Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field:

• Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;

• Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,

• Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years,

• Rise and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.

• And let his wife and children return from the opressor's scourge.

• They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream,

• Singing, 'The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning

• And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;

• For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.' "

(Two lines of this passage reappears in The Four Zoas [Nt 9], 138.20-21; E406.)

The first two lines strongly evoke the Resurrection, a measure of the jubilation Blake felt at both the American and French Revolutions. Blake went immediately to an earlier resurrection recorded in Ezekiel.

The 'slave' is both a reference to the actual slaves who graced the British economy, and to English workers in conditions of slavery, such as the 8 year old children working 14 hours a day for six pence a week.

The bonds, the bars, the chains are those same 'mind forg'd manacles' we saw in London, the chains of the mind, which afflict us today just as they did in Blake's day.

"The sun has left his blackness, etc": this line occurs again near the end of the Four Zoas (Night 9 138:20).

The Everlasting Gospel

(A portion)

• • The Vision of Christ that thou dost see

  • Is my vision's greatest enemy.

  • Thine has a great hook nose like thine,

  • Mine has a snub nose like to mine.

  • Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;

  • Mine speaks in parables to the blind.

  • Thine loves the same world that mine hates;

  • Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.

  • Socrates taught what Meletus

  • Loath'd as a nation's bitterest curse,

  • And Caiaphas was in his own mind

  • A benefactor to mankind.

  • Both read the Bible day and night,

  • But thou read'st black where I read white.

The rest of this poem is difficult for the new reader. After about a dozen readings it may begin to yield more and more meaning. In this respect Blake is much like the Bible, and in fact Northrup Frye referred to him as a 'bible soaked protestant'. His approach to the Bible is arcane, but it will yield meanings that you never dreamed of before.

Milton

In the second half of his career Blake had largely dropped his preoccupation with "Old Nobodaddy" in favor of the New Testament God. His first large prophetic poem, Milton, begins with a famous poem called Jerusalem that latter became the theme song of the British Labor party; used to sing it as a hymn. (Blake was not the first person to see the presence of Jesus is ancient England. Tradition tells us that he was there in the first century.)

Here is more on Milton.

Jerusalem

We see Blake, the new man, again in in these passages from Jerusalem:

• This theme calls me in sleep night after night, and every morn Awakes me at sun-rise; then I see the Saviour over me Spreading his beams of love and dictating the words of this mild song.

• Awake! awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand!

• I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine:

• ibres of love from man to man thro' Albion's pleasant land. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

• I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend:

• Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me." (Jerusalem 4: 3-20.)

• "Mutual in one another's love and wrath all renewing We live as One Man;

• for contracting our infinite senses We behold multitude, or expanding, we behold as one,

• As One Man all the Universal Family, and that One Man We call Jesus the Christ;

• and he in us, and we in him Live in perfect harmony in Eden, the land of life,

• Giving, receiving, and forgiving each other's trespasses.

• e is the Good shepherd, he is the Lord and master, He is the Shepherd of Albion,

• he is all in all, In Eden, in the garden of God, and in heavenly Jerusalem."

(Jerusalem 35:16-25)

Both passages quoted in The Gospel of Christian Atheism (altizer))

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