William Blake (1757-1827), was an
English poet, painter, and print maker. Considered mad by
contemporaries, Blake is now considered a seminal figure
in the history of poetry and visual arts. He was a man of intense moral
purpose who looked forward to the establishment of paradise on earth.
In his strange, mystical poems Blake envisioned earth and air as filled
with spiritual forces in unending struggle, “armies of angels that soar,
demons that lurk. “ As a child he once thought he saw the face of god
peering in through the window. Because no one else could understand the
“prophesies” in his verse, people thought him insane. Yet some of his
poems are charmingly lyrical, written with almost childlike simplicity.
The first editions of Blake’s poems are remarkable in that the poet was
also artist and engraver. He engraved the poems and his illustrations
for them upon copper plates. The pages printed from these plates he
later tinted by hand. Blake’s illustrations and engravings, both for his
own books and for books of other writers, have the same unearthly,
symbolical, and mystical quality as his poems. He wrote the following
poem:
