William Blake’s selected readings

The marriage of heaven and hell

• “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy [Passion], Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.”
• “From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy [Passion]. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.”
• “Energy [Passion] is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.”
  • Hmmm. Reason rides the periphery of passion? Reason depends on passion (reasoning is biased by passion), but also restrains that passion (from what? From encroaching the energy of others?)
• “Those who restrain their desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.”
• “And being restrain’d it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire.”

  Proverbs from Hell

• “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”
• “The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure.”
• “A dead body revenges not injuries.”
• “The most sublime act is to set another before you.”
• “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”
• “Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.”
• “Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.”
• “What is now proved was once only imagin’d.”
• “The cistern contains; the fountain overflows.”
• “Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
• “Expect poison from the standing water.”
• “The weak in courage is strong in cunning.”
• “The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.”
• “Exuberance is Beauty.”
  • Abundance of energy, excitement, cheerfulness
• “Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.”
  • Improvement in the instrumental sense, with brings us further from the complexity of reality. The crooked roads are more likely to fit closer to that complexity, to fit closer reality and draw from the source of Genius.
• “If the door of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks in his cavern.”
• “Does not the eagle scorn the earth and despise the treasures beneath? But the mole knoweth what is there, and the worm shall tell it thee.”
  • The eagle delights in soaring, and so despises that which removes him from that freedom
  • The discerning analytical eye, distanced from stable ground, sees embodied, grounded experience with contempt (as the left hemisphere’s mode of being does)
  • The mole represent a blind, yet intuitive being, who knows what is there while nevertheless having a less objective, birdseyeview of the landscape.
• “And I know that This World Is a World of Imagination & Vision. I see Every thing I paint In This World, but Every body does not see alike. To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun, & a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some See Nature all Ridicule & Deformity, & by these I shall not regulate my proportions; & Some Scarce See Nature at all. But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, So he Sees. As the Bye is formed, such are its Powers. You certainly Mistake when you say that the Visions of Fancy are not to be found in This World. To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination, & I feel Flatter’d when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil & Milton in so high a rank of Art? Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the Imagination, which is Spiritual Sensation, & but mediately to the Understanding or Reason?” (From a letter to Dr. Trusler)

Milton

Plate 31

His little throat labours with inspiration; every feather On throat & breast & wings vibrates with the effluence Divine. All Nature listens silent to him, & the awful Sun Stands still upon the Mountain looking on this little Bird With eyes of soft humility & wonder, love & awe.

…

Thou perceivest the Flowers out forth their precious Odours, And none can tell how from so small a center comes such sweets, Forgetting that within that Center Eternity expands

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.

Nurse’s Song

When the voices of children are heard on the green, And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast, And everything else is still.

‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise; Come, come, leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies.’

‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day, And we cannot go to sleep; Besides, in the sky the little birds fly, And the hills are all cover’d with sheep.’

‘Well, well, go and play till the light fades away, And then go home to bed.’ The little ones leapèd and shoutèd and laugh’d And all the hills echoèd.

The Voice of the Ancient Bard

Youth of delight! come hither And see the opening morn, Image of Truth new-born. Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason, Dark disputes and artful teazing. Folly is an endless maze; Tangled roots perplex her ways; How many have fallen there! They stumble all night over bones of the dead; And feel–they know not what but care; And wish to lead others, when they should be led.

From the Book of Urizen

… From the depths of dark solitude. From The eternal abode in my holiness, Hidden set apart in my stern counsels Reserv’d for the days of futurity, I have sought for a joy without pain,

For a solid without fluctuation Why will you die O Eternals? Why live in unquenchable burnings? …

Mock on, mock on

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau; Mock on, mock on; ‘tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a gem Reflected in the beams divine; Blown back they blind the mocking eye, But still in Israel’s paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus And Newton’s Particles of Light Are sands upon the Red Sea shore, Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.