William Blake’s poems occupy a unique and enduring place in English literature, blending visionary imagination with profound spiritual and social insight. Writing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Blake created poetry that challenged religious hypocrisy, political oppression, and the constraints of rational thought. His work is notable for its symbolic richness, musical language, and deep concern with the human soul.
Blake’s most famous collections, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, present contrasting states of the human condition. Innocence reflects purity, wonder, and natural joy, while Experience exposes corruption, suffering, and injustice. Poems such as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” reveal Blake’s ability to explore complex moral and philosophical questions through deceptively simple imagery.
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| William blake |
Beyond lyric beauty, Blake’s poetry is revolutionary in spirit. He believed imagination to be divine and viewed the poet as a prophet who could awaken society. His visionary language, mythic symbols, and passionate voice continue to influence modern poetry, art, and thought, affirming William Blake as one of the most original and powerful poets in the English tradition.
The Sick Rose
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Love's Secret
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart;
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,
Ah! she did depart!
Soon as she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly
He took her with a sigh.
A Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
London
I wandered through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
A Divine Image
Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.
The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.
A Little Boy Lost
"Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.
"And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door."
The Priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired the priestly care.
And standing on the altar high,
"Lo, what a fiend is here! said he:
"One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery."
The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,
And burned him in a holy place
Where many had been burned before;
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such thing done on Albion's shore?
Ah! Sunflower
Ah Sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun;
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sunflower wishes to go!
The Schoolboy
I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me.
O! what sweet company.
But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn.
The little ones spend the day,
In sighing and dismay.
Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour,
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learnings bower,
Worn thro' with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy,
Sit in a cage and sing.
How can a child when fears annoy.
But droop his tender wing.
And forget his youthful spring.
O! father & mother. if buds are nip'd,
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are strip'd
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care's dismay.
How shall the summer arise in joy.
Or the summer fruits appear.
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy
Or bless the mellowing year.
When the blasts of winter appear.
