The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

T o THE P OET C OLERIDGE / 7 5 As summer's whisper'd sighs unfold Her million, million buds of gold; Then will I climb the breezy bounds, Of thy new Paradise extended, 25 And listen to the distant sounds Of winds, and foamy torrents blended! Spirit divine! with thee I'll trace Imagination's boundless space! With thee, beneath thy sunny dome, 30 I'll listen to the minstrel's lay, Hymning the gradual close of day; In caves of ice enchanted roam, Where on the glitt'ring entrance plays The moon's-beam with its silv'ry rays; 35 Or, when the glassy stream, That through the deep dell flows, Flashes the noon's hot beam; The noon's hot beam, that midway shows Thy flaming temple, studded o'er 40 With all Peruvia's0 lustrous store! Peru's There will I trace the circling bounds Of thy new Paradise extended! And listen to the awful sounds, Of winds, and foamy torrents blended! 45 And now I'll pause to catch the moan Of distant breezes, cavern-pent; Now, ere the twilight tints are flown, Purpling the landscape, far and wide, On the dark promontory's side 50 I'll gather wild flow'rs, dew besprent,0 sprinkled And weave a crown for thee, Genius of Heav'n-taught poesy! While, op'ning to my wond'ring eyes, Thou bidst a new creation rise, 55 I'll raptur'd trace the circling bounds Of thy rich Paradise extended, And listen to the varying sounds Of winds, and foaming torrents blended. And now, with lofty tones inviting, 60 Thy nymph, her dulcimer swift smiting, Shall wake me in ecstatic measures! Far, far remov'd from mortal pleasures! In cadence rich, in cadence strong, Proving the wondrous witcheries of song! 65 I hear her voice! thy sunny dome, Thy caves of ice, aloud repeat, Vibrations, madd'ning sweet, Calling the visionary wand'rer home. She sings of thee, O favor'd child 70 Of minstrelsy, sublimely wild!

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76 / WILLIAM BLAKE

Of thee, whose soul can feel the tone Which gives to airy dreams a magic all thy own!

Oct. 1800 1801

WILLIAM BLAKE

1757-1827

What William Blake called his "Spiritual Life" was as varied, free, and dramatic as his "Corporeal Life" was simple, limited, and unadventurous. His father was a London tradesman. His only formal education was in art: at the age of ten he entered a drawing school, and later he studied for a time at the school of the Royal Academy of Arts. At fourteen he entered an apprenticeship for seven years to a well-known engraver, James Basire, and began reading widely in his free time and trying his hand at poetry. At twenty-four he married Catherine Boucher, daughter of a market gardener. She was then illiterate, but Blake taught her to read and to help him in his engraving and printing. In the early and somewhat sentimentalized biographies, Catherine is represented as an ideal wife for an unorthodox and impecunious genius. Blake, however, must have been a trying domestic partner, and his vehement attacks on the torment caused by a possessive, jealous female will, which reached their height in 1793 and remained prominent in his writings for another decade, probably reflect a troubled period at home. The couple was childless.

The Blakes for a time enjoyed a moderate prosperity while Blake gave drawing lessons, illustrated books, and engraved designs made by other artists. When the demand for his work slackened, Blake in 1800 moved to a cottage at Felpham, on the Sussex seacoast, to take advantage of the patronage of the wealthy amateur of the arts and biographer William Hayley (also a supporter of Charlotte Smith), who with the best of narrow intentions tried to transform Blake into a conventional artist and breadwinner. But the caged eagle soon rebelled. Hayley, Blake wrote, "is the Enemy of my Spiritual Life while he pretends to be the Friend of my Corporeal."

At Felpham in 1803 occurred an event that left a permanent mark on Blake's mind and art�an altercation with one John Schofield, a private in the Royal Dragoons. Blake ordered the soldier out of his garden and, when Schofield replied with threats and curses against Blake and his wife, pushed him the fifty yards to the inn where he was quartered. Schofield brought charges that Blake had uttered seditious statements about king and country. Since England was at war with France, sedition was a hanging offense. Blake was acquitted�an event, according to a newspaper account, "which so gratified the auditory that the court was . . . thrown into an uproar by their noisy exultations." Nevertheless Schofield, his fellow soldier Cock, and other participants in the trial haunted Blake's imagination and were enlarged to demonic characters who play a sinister role in Jerusalem. The event exacerbated Blake's sense that ominous forces were at work in the contemporary world and led him to complicate the symbolic and allusive style by which he veiled the radical religious, moral, and political opinions that he expressed in his poems.