William BLAKE (1757-1827)

The Lamb

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
5 Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb, who made thee
10 Dost thou know who made thee

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb*:
15 He is meek, & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child, & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee.
20 Little Lamb, God bless thee.
1789

*Lamb: Christ as the Lamb of God.

The Divine Image*

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

5 For Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is God our father dear:
And Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is Man his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart
10 Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
15 Prays to the human form divine
Love Mercy Pity Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk or jew.
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell
20 There God is dwelling too.
1789

*Note the absence of imagery in this lyric of abstraction, and compare it to the contrary of Experience, "The Human Abstract."

The Human Abstract

Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;

5 And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.

William B

LAKE

[1757-1827]

2

Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
10 And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;*
15 And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven* his nest has made
20 In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree*
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain.
1793 1794

*Soon ...head: This is the Tree of Mystery, the Norse Yggdrasil that the god Odin hanged himself upon, in order to gain
knowledge of the runes, or riddles of Mystery.
* the Raven: Odin's emblem, here a scavenger upon humanity's repressed desires.
* The Gods ... Tree: After Loki, by trickery, arranged by Balder to die by a mistletoe branch, the gods searched through nature
to find the tree, so as to restore Balder; Blake's tree is natural enough, but grows in our minds, which have fallen into nature.

The Tyger

1 Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

2 In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes!
On what wings dare he aspire?*
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?*

3 And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
4 What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

5 When the stars threw down their spears,*
And water'd heaven with their tears*:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
6 Tyger, Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
1793 1794

* On ... aspire: a suggestion of Icarus.
* What ... fire: a hint of Prometheus.
* When ... spears: The stars, or fallen angels, never throw down their spears and surrender in Milton's Paradise Lost; in Night
V of Blake's The Four Zoas, Blake clearly associates "The Tyger" with the Fall of Urizen, who says: "I call'e the stars around
my feet in the night of councils dark; / The stars threw down their spears & fled naked away. / We fell."

William B

LAKE

[1757-1827]

3

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.

1794

* Note that the Rose's bed is "of crimson joy" before the worm finds it out. The bed is concealed, and evidently a place of self-
gratification. "Dark secret love" comes and destroys, possibly because a bright open love would have been rejected anyway.

London*

1 I wander thro' each charter'd* street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.*

2 In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every* voice: in every ban,*
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

3 How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every black'ning church appalls,*
And the hapless Soldiers sigh,*
Runs in blood down palace walls

4 But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear*
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse*
1793 1794

*London: This greatest of Blake's prophetic lyrics is based on Ezekiel, and associates London under Pitt's counter-revolutionary
repression with Jerusalem waiting for its destruction. But only the third stanza centres upon societal repression; the other three
describe every person's all-too-natural abandonment of his own liberty.
* charter'd: A bitter, multiple usage; it refers to "the charter'd rights of Englishmen," curtailed by Pitt, but also to commercial
chartering, and finally to "natural" chartering (the Thames is "bound" or chartered between its banks).
* marks of woe: Here, and later in the poem, Blake closely echoes Ezekiel, as he will in the larger structure of his epic
Jerusalem; see Ezekiel 9:4, where God says: "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark
upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof."
* every: The emphasis on "every" should make us wary of a purely societal interpretation; Blake means natural fear, which
warrants the repetition of "every."
* ban: The marriage announcement as well as all societal prohibitions.
*appalls: Drapes in a pall.
* sigh: Like "cry" in l.9, this derives from Ezekiel 9:4.
* new-born Infants tear: Newborn infants have no tears until their eyes are moistened by doctor or midwife; Blake attributes a
natural fact to the harlot's curse; the other meaning found here by interpreters, that the infant suffers prenatal blindness, caused by
the parent's venereal disease by earlier infection from the harlot, blends into the curse as spell; the curse is a shouted outcry in the
street (most of the poem consists of sounds) which "blasts" the tear in the sense of scattering it, as if by wind; the harlot
ultimately is Nature herself, as we should expect in Blake.
* Marriage hearse: Blake means that every marriage whatsoever rides in a hearse, rather than in a celebratory coach.