The Complete Poems

by William Blake

  1–4] The first stanza is an afterthought written over an erased original opening.

  3 Fuseli… both Turk & Jew Fuseli was actually Swiss.

  ‘I WILL TELL YOU WHAT JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA…’

  Joseph of Arimathea, according to legend, brought the Holy Grail to Britain. B. sets him against the Roman scholar Pliny and the Roman Emperor Trajan.

  TO VENETIAN ARTISTS

  1 Newton did major work in optics and the phenomenon of colour.

  BLAKES APOLOGY FOR HIS CATALOGUE

  These verses exist in a much-revised first draft in Notebook, pp. 62–3, where they follow a passage in ‘Public Address’, and where the title and first couplet are squeezed in at the bottom. A fair copy is on p. 65. The present text follows the line-arrangement of the latter.

  4 Bartolloze Francesco Bartollozi (1727–1815), a popular engraver who worked in a ‘soft’ style while B. continued to do old-fashioned ‘hard-line’ engraving.

  7 Dryden in Rhyme Dryden’s rhymed closet-opera The State of Innocence (1674) was based on Paradise Lost, and Nat Lee’s prefatory poem praises Dryden as a refiner of Milton’s rough ore. B. comments: ‘Stupidity will prefer Dryden because it is in Rhyme and monotonous sing song sing song from beginning to end’ (‘Public Address’).

  9 Tom Cooke cut Hogarth down The engraver Thomas Cook (1744–1818) created ‘Hogarth Restored’, laborious copies of Hogarth’s works, first in the same size as the originals, then reduced.

  FROM CRATETOS

  A literal translation of this epigram, ascribed to Crates of Thebes, is: ‘Time has bent me; though a skilled craftsman, yet he makes all things weaker.’

  ‘THE CAVERNS OF THE GRAVE…’

  A poem for the Earl of Egremont’s wife, who had commissioned a painting of the Last Judgement, which B. completed in 1808. The opening lines refer to B.’s illustrations for Blair’s Grave, which he had dedicated to the Queen (see p. 608 above).

  Miscellaneous Verses and Epigrams

  VERSE FROM THE MARGINALIA TO REYNOLDS’S DISCOURSES

  Blake commented lengthily and splenetically in his copy of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, ed. Edmund Malone, 1798, and included several bits of verse. Some were written at B.’s first reading, others c. 1809–10 – the same period in which he was writing Notebook epigrams against Reynolds and other figures in the world of art.

  ADVICE OF THE POPES

  Written on the title page of Reynolds’s Works, with the comment: ‘This Man was Hired to Depress Art.’

  ‘SOME LOOK. TO SEE THE SWEET OUTLINES…’

  Sardonic response to Reynolds’s admission that he did not at first appreciate Raphael.

  ‘WHEN FRANCE GOT FREE.…’

  Malone in a footnote praises Reynolds’s disapproval of the French Revolution, and quotes Pope: ‘They led their wild desires to woods and caves,/And thought that all but SAVAGES were slaves.’

  ON THE VENETIAN PAINTER

  This and the next two pieces deal with painters such as Titian, whose ‘elegance’ Reynolds praises.

  VERSE FROM THE ADVERTISEMENT TO BLAKE’S EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS, 1809

  An insertion in B.’s advertisement (dated 15 May 1809), following notice of one of his major paintings: ‘THE ANCIENT BRITONS – Three Ancient Britons overthrowing the Army of armed Romans; the Figures full as large as Life – From the Welch Triads’. The lines have been traced (Damon, Dictionary, under ‘Welsh’) to an item in the Myvyrian Anthology (1801–7) which tells of Arthur’s last battle against the Saxons. B.’s first stanza is an adaptation which alters Saxons to Romans, the second stanza is his own invention. The Welsh nationalist Owen Pugh, friend of the Blakes, may have shown him the poem.

  EPIGRAMS FROM A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE AND ‘PUBLIC ADDRESS’

  Blake published the Descriptive Catalogue to accompany his unsuccessful exhibition of paintings in 1809. It is a polemical work which not only lists and describes the paintings for sale, but defends B.’s ideas and attacks his foes. The first epigram attacks Thomas Stothard, whose ‘reserve and modesty’ were praised in a prospectus for his rival painting of the Canterbury Pilgrims, and the second attacks Flaxman and Stothard together. Rhymed versions of both appear in the Notebook, pp. 618, 617.

  ‘Public Address’ (an editorially given title) consists of disconnected fragments of an essay on art and artists scattered through the Notebook. Again, B. attacks his foes and defends himself and his own principles as an artist. In addition to the two epigrams given here, there is a shorter version of ‘Blakes apology for his Catalogue’ (see p. 627).

  Jerusalem

  An illuminated book of 100 plates, including four full-page designs, known in five copies printed by Blake, and three printed posthumously. Although the 1804 title-page may indicate the beginning of composition, most of the poem was probably written between 1809 and 1815, and etched between 1815 and 1820. The arrangement of plates is uniform except for Chapter 2, in which the order of plates 29–46 varies in two copies.

  Jerusalem, Blake’s final epic poem, is his monumental equivalent of Milton’s History of England. Incorporating B ’s various earlier mythologies into a single self-consistent myth, it tells the story of the Fall of ALBION – who is Blake’s Mankind – from union with Jesus, the Divine Vision; Albion’s rejection of his EMANATION, JERUSALEM, and his seduction by the lower female principle of VALA; the labours of the prophet LOS – who embodies man’s visionary and creative powers – to save him from the violent and cruel nightmare of his ensuing history; and his final regeneration and reunion with Jesus.

  Jerusalem is more complicated in its personages and actions than any of B.’s other works, in part because it is an ‘intellectual allegory’ in the Dantean sense of pursuing several different levels or types of meaning simultaneously. Among these are:

  1. Historical-geographical. Albion is both a giant man who incorporates all men from the beginning to the end of time, and a place. In Eternity, Albion contained all nations within himself. In his fall, the nations separate into mere physical geographical locations. Most tragically, the lands of the Bible become separated from those of Great Britain. This gives B. several significant sub-themes.

  (a) Place-names within and around London and throughout Great Britain become loci for much of the poem’s action, and are sometimes personified. In an important episode of Chapter 2, the cathedral cities of Great Britain become ‘Friends’ who try to aid him, but fail.

  (b) A system of correspondences exists between British and biblical locales. For example, Tyburn Hill equals Calvary, Lambeth equals Bethlehem, mountains in Derbyshire are identified with mountains in the Holy Land, and the counties of England, Scotland and Wales are identified with the regions belonging to the twelve tribes of Israel.

  (c) The history handed down to us by the Old and New Testaments is really Albion’s history. The Patriarchs are identified with the DRUIDS, who according to Blake worshipped nature and practised human sacrifice. The conquest of Canaan by the twelve tribes means a binding of man to material nature, and a confirmation of self-righteous moral law. The apostasy of the secessionist northern kingdom of Israel, whose capital was Tirzah, corresponds to Albion’s further plunge into materialism. And the sufferings of Jerusalem, culminating in Babylonian captivity, reflect Great Britain’s stubborn rejection of the Divine Vision.

  (d) Albion has TWELVE SONS and TWELVE DAUGHTERS, corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. They enact the secular history of Britain, as the tribes enact religious history. The Sons (sometimes called Spectres) are motivated by rationalism and militarism, and have names taken from Blake’s personal enemies. The Daughters (their Emanations) have names of queens and princesses in British legend, and personify Female Will. These groups are:

  Hyle

  Cambel-Boadicea

  Hand

  Gwendolen

  Coban

  Ignoge

  Gwantok

  Cordella

  Peachey

  Mehetabel


  Brereton

  Ragan

  Slayd

  Gonorill

  Hutton

  Gwinefred

  Skofield

  Gwineverra

  Kox

  Estrild

  Kotope

  Sabrina

  Bowen

  Conwenna

  2. Religious-sexual. Religious and sexual symbols are closely associated throughout B.’s work, from the short lyrics ‘The Garden of Love’ and ‘I saw a chapel all of gold…’ onwards. In f Mankind’s lapse into false religion continues to be presented in terms of dominance by females.

  The ‘body’ of the faithful is to Blake a human body, in which male and female are one, and both are one in Jesus. All historical Churches and religions form impediments to such union. Instead of uniting Man and God, they divide them. All restrictions on human sexuality, too, form barriers. For sexual impulses, however ‘sinful’, must be expressed to be transcended. To show the identity of these issues, Blake presents temples and tabernacles, arks, veils and guardian cherubim – all that is ‘secret’, ‘sacred’, ‘holy’ and untouchable – through imagery of a chaste feminine body. As the veil of the temple was rent when Jesus died, so must organized religion, and the moral laws it enforces, fall before the higher union of man, woman and God.

  (b) Like the author of Revelation, Blake sees Jerusalem as both a city and a woman who is the bride of Jesus. But at the outset of the poem, Albion jealously refuses to give Jerusalem to Jesus, moralistically rejects her as sinful and allows her to be cast out by his sons and daughters. Further, he allows himself to be seduced by Vala, Jerusalem’s ‘shadow’. Vala is the seductive goddess of Nature (of whom the sub-manifestations RAHAB and TIRZAH are, respectively, the Whore and the Virgin), and she is also the unholy city, Babylon. Worship or ‘love’ of Vala is what Blake calls ‘Natural Religion’. It means division between man and God, submission to corporeal limitations, allegiance to the kingdoms of this world and devotion to war and human sacrifice.

  (c) Blake posits a succession of twenty-seven churches in man’s history, and describes them as combinations of male and female principles, such that the first third are ‘hermaphroditic’, the second third ‘male within female’, the last group ‘female within male’.

  3. Political. The specifically political portions of Jerusalem are those connected with LUVAH. As in earlier works, Luvah is the Zoa of Passion within Albion; he is also France. Rejection and sacrifice of Luvah means both suppression of domestic radicalism and hostility towards revolution abroad. The theme of vengeance enacted against Luvah treats the Napoleonic wars, and embodies Blake’s plea that even an offensive nation should not be punished but forgiven. Beyond these episodes, however, we are to remember that Jerusalem is named ‘Liberty’, and that throughout the poem rejection of her means rejection of political liberty as well as of sexual and spiritual fulfilment.

  4. Psychological. The fallen Albion may be seen as an individual human being in a condition of mental illness, variously described as asleep, diseased or dead. By renouncing Jesus and Jerusalem, he renounces his own humanity. His sleep is the sleep of Reason – a barren rationalism which demands physical demonstration, and causes doubt and despair. His disease is the disease of Moral Virtue which sets up laws of purity, demands righteousness and punishes the sinful. Devoured by his own selfhood, he is dead to the promise of salvation. Until he wakes from his sleep in Chapter 4, he is portrayed as tortured but stubborn in his errors, and dominated by his rational spectre, the femme fatale Vala and the cruel Sons and Daughters who express his selfishness. He is – the reader must understand – each of us, as we live in this world.

  5. Visionary. The prophet LOS, throughout Jerusalem, strives to build GOLGONOOZA, a ‘fourfold’ city of art or imagination which is simultaneously a human body. Working within ULRO – the hell of a material world or of a material body – he and his sons labour perpetually at his furnaces, while his female counterpart ENITHARMON labours with her daughters at their looms, giving permanent form to all things on earth. His one desire is to save Albion, who is unaware of his existence. He must also struggle against his own Spectre – all the forces within the artist which urge him against creativity – and force the Spectre to work with him. Finally, he must persist despite the rebellion of his Emanation, who is both female counterpart and muse. Although Blake speaks in his own voice on occasion, Los is certainly a projection of his character, desires and struggles as an artist. Los, keeper of the Divine Vision throughout the ‘time of troubles’ which we call human history, is the hero of the poem; in the finale, however, he disappears, having been re-absorbed into the fulfilled Albion.

  Pl. I [Frontispiece] This depicts a man in a hat and coat, carrying a shining globe, as he enters a darkened doorway under a pointed arch. The text is seen only on an early proof of the plate; it was afterwards deleted by further engraving.

  CHAPTER I

  This opening chapter, prefaced with an address ‘To the Public’, presents the issues of the poem in the relatively simple terms of unity v. division, love v. jealousy, faith v. despair, forgiveness v. accusation. At the outset, Albion rejects the love of the Saviour, and hides Jerusalem from his ‘vision and fruition’. The rest of the chapter has two major movements, one showing the internal struggles of Los (and Blake) to maintain hope, the other showing the decline of Albion to a state of despair. At the centre of the chapter is a vision of Golgonooza. The sections are as follows: Pl. 4: The Saviour rejected by Albion. Pl. 5: Blake announces his ‘great task’, and sees the ‘starry wheels’ of mechanical Reason, driven by the sons of Albion, drawing Jerusalem eastwards into non-entity. Pls. 6 – 11: A long dialogue between Los and his Spectre. Los forces the reluctant Spectre to labour at the furnaces. Erin comes forth from the furnaces with the Daughters of Beulah and the Sons and Daughters of Los, and all commiserate over the sufferings of Jerusalem.

  Pls. 12–14: Vision of Golgonooza.

  P1. 15: Blake sees the sleeping Albion, the present state of Europe, and the original division of the twelve tribes from Albion. Pl. 16: The geographical labours of Los and his sons. Pl. 17: Los communes with himself concerning female temptation and love.

  P1s. 18–19: The Sons of Albion denounce Jerusalem, and their starry wheels rend Albion’s loins.

  P1s. 20–24: Dialogue of Albion, Jerusalem and Vala, concludes in Albion’s despair.

  P1. 25: Beulah laments over Albion.

  P1. 3.3 Giants & Fairies Epic and lyric poems.

  28–9 Sinais.… art of writing A tradition that phonetic writing began with Moses.

  36–58 The first free-verse manifesto in English. It is modelled on Milton’s prefatory note to Paradise Lost justifying blank verse.

  40–41 Eδοθη… € π⍳ γη ‘All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.’ B.’s argument is that the power of the poet derives ultimately from Jesus.

  43–5 Monotonous Cadence… derived from… Rhyming Sense unclear. An extension of rhyming? Liberated from rhyming? ‘The modern bondage of Rhyming’ is Milton’s phrase.

  P1. 4 Movos ó Iεsous In John 8:9 ‘only Jesus’ remains with the woman found in adultery, when her accusers depart. In Luke 9:36 the slightly different phrase ‘ó Iεçouç!¿ovoç’ gives us ‘Jesus alone’ at the Transfiguration, after the vision and cloud vanish. Both passages have application to the theme of Jerusalem.

  6 Awake… O sleeper Jesus addresses Albion, who is both England and Mankind.

  14 In Proverbs 8:30 ‘Wisdom’ is co-eternal with God, ‘and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him’.

  17 the vision and fruition of the Holy-one The phrase implies mutual perceiving and sexual union or birth-giving between Jerusalem and her Saviour. Jealous Albion, because he will not accept the Saviour as one with himself but sees him as a rival, has cut off this union.

  18 I am not a God afar off In Deuteronomy 30:11–13 the commandment of God ‘is not hidden… neither is it far off… But the word
is very nigh to thee’.

  29 Albion’s reply to the Saviour echoes Pharaoh in Ezekiel 29:3: ‘My river is mine own and I have made it for myself.’

  30 Malvern, Cheviot, Plinlimmon, Snowdon Mountains in England and Wales.

  P1. 5.1–15 Albion’s jealous dissembling means psychic disintegration. His parts are randomly scattered, given up to conflict, and shrunken, while his emanation is sacrificed.

  3 Cambridge & Oxford & London Albion’s seats of imaginative leadership are lost in the errors of rationalist philosophy; their ‘starry Wheels’ (1. 4) represent the dead Newtonian universe. These wheels, which become a major negative symbol, are driven – we soon discover – by the Sons of Albion.

  16 Trembling I sit Blake speaks of his task as a poet. The following passage introducesGOLGONOOZA and the furnace of Los, set against the destructiveSONS and DAUGHTERS OF ALBION.

  25–7 Hand….… Bowen See ALBION, SONS OF.

  31–2 Southward… Northward… time after time See Milton 26.13n. The northern entrance is for mortals, the southern for immortals. The Sons of Albion are representative immortals who are recurrently born into history, as on a wheel.

  34 Male… Furnace; Female… loom The Sons and Daughters of Albion represent destructive furnace and loom, opposed to the creative furnace and loom of Los and Enitharmon.

  39 they controll our Vegetative powers The Daughters of Albion control our mortal life-cycle. Their names are listed in ll. 40–45.

  46–53 Newtonian starry wheels, turning in vacuum, create a draught which disperses JERUSALEM and VALA in smoke rising from the chimneys of Los’s furnaces. The idea is that Error is a vacuum which sucks in Truth: ‘Mighty was the draught of Voidness to draw Existence in’ (FZII.23. 18).