William Blake was born in London, where he attended art schools, including the Royal Academy School. After a short apprenticeship as an engraver, he decided to follow his "Divine Visions" and returned to London where he published a number of collections of poetry illustrated with his own etchings until the 1820's, after which he devoted himself totally to pictoral art. Dissatisfied with the prevailing literary styles, he followed the Eizabethan and early seventeenth-century poets, the poetry of eighteenth-century poets such as Chatterton and Collins and the Ossianic poems. He favored near and partial rhyme and used bold figures of speech and novel rhythms so as to convey a multiplicity of meanings.

William Blake was a leading figure in the Romantic period. His visionary, symbolic poems include Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794).   Blakes's poem Jerusalem (1820) was set to music by Charles Parry (1848-1918). Blake also illustrated texts by Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare, as well as the Bible.

Blake developed his own mythology and came to see himself as the visionary, prophetic figure, or Bard. Centuring around the Biblical stories of the Fall, the Redemption, and the reestablishment of Eden, he saw the first as a psychic disintegration resulting from the oriinal sin of Selfhood and the latter as a return to psychic wholeness: "A Resurrectioin to Unity." His Univeral Man includes in himself God who is not a transcendent Being separate from humanity.

from Songs of Innocence

Night

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest.
And I must seek for mine.
The moon like a flower.
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.

Farewell, green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have took delight;
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing.
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.

They look in every thoughtless nest,
Where birds are cover'd warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm;
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping
They pour sleep on their head
And sit down by their bed.

When wolves and tygers howl for prey,
They pitying stand and weep;
Seeking to drive their thirst away.
And keep them from the sheep.
But if they rush dreadful,
The angels, most heedful,
Recieve each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.

And there the lion's ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold.
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold,
Saying "Wrath, by his meekness,
And, by his health, sickness
Is driven away
From our immortal day.

"And now beside thee, bleating lamb,
I can lie down and sleep;
Or think on him who bore thy name,
Graze after thee and weep.
For, wash'd in life's river,
My bright mane for ever
Shall shine like the gold
As I guard o'er the fold."

The Chimney Sweeper

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curl'd llke a lamb's back. was shav'd: so I said
"Hush. Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned or Jack.
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black.

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river. and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark.
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.

from Songs of Experience

Holy Thursday

Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reducd to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song!
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor,
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
And their ways are fill'd with thorns
It is eternal winter there.

For where-e'er the sun does shine,
And where-e'er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.