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Publication
Harmondsworth; New York [etc.] : Penguin, 1977, 1.071 p. (Penguin Classics)
Description
Classic Literature. Fiction. Poetry. HTML: Though his extraordinary talent went largely unrecognized during his own lifetime, British painter and poet William Blake is now regarded as one of the most important creative figures of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Characterized by their mystical but accessible quality, Blake's poems prefigured the Romantic movement that would take hold later in the 1800s. This volume brings together Blake's best-known verse..
User reviews
LibraryThing member RodneyWelch
An eternal source of inspiration. Beyond staggering.
LibraryThing member HowlAtCLP
William Blake was a major influence on Allen Ginsberg and on 'Howl,' especially 'Footnote to Howl' with its exclamations of 'Holy! Holy! Holy!' and ecstatic repetition.
LibraryThing member jacindaj
An awesome little book full of great poems. Blake is a favorite of mine so I was very happy to get my hands on this and add it to my library!
LibraryThing member isabelx
This book contains Songs of Innocence and of Experience, followed by an Appendix containing A Divine Image and The Book of Thel. My favourite poems are in Songs of Experience. They are darker and more critical of society, human nature and the Church than the Songs of Innocence. As they are well out
The Garden of Love
I laid me down upon a bank
Where Love lay sleeping
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping
Then I went to the heath and the wild
To the thistles and thorns of the waste
And they told me how they were beguiled
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste
I went to the Garden of Love
And saw what I never had seen
A Chapel was built in the midst
Where I used to play on the green
And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore
And I saw it was filled with graves
And tombstones where flowers should be
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds
And binding with briars my joys and desires
London
I wander 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 appalls;
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.
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of copyright, I will include a couple of them here. The Garden of Love
I laid me down upon a bank
Where Love lay sleeping
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping
Then I went to the heath and the wild
To the thistles and thorns of the waste
And they told me how they were beguiled
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste
I went to the Garden of Love
And saw what I never had seen
A Chapel was built in the midst
Where I used to play on the green
And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore
And I saw it was filled with graves
And tombstones where flowers should be
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds
And binding with briars my joys and desires
London
I wander 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 appalls;
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.
Show Less
Language
Original publication date
1827
Physical description
1071 p.; 19 cm
ISBN
0140422153 / 9780140422153