And I heard his voice mild,
Saying: "This is my fold,
O thou ram horned with gold,
Who awakest from sleep
On the sides of the deep.
On the mountains around
The roarings resound
Of the lion and wolf,
The loud sea and deep gulph.
These are guards of my fold,
O thou ram horned with gold!"
And the voice faded mild,—
I remained as a child;
All I ever had known
Before me bright shone:
I saw you and your wife
By the fountains of life.
Such the vision to me
Appeared on the sea.
TO MRS. BUTTS.1
IFE of the friend of those I most revere, Receive this tribute from a harp sincere ;
Go on in virtuous seed-sowing on mould
Of human vegetation, and behold
Your harvest springing to eternal life,
Parent of youthful minds, and happy wife.
1 Sent in the same letter as the preceding verses.
TH happiness stretched across the hills
In a cloud that dewy sweetness distils,
With a blue sky spread over with wings,
And a mild sun that mounts and sings;
With trees and fields full of fairy elves,
And little devils who fight for themselves,
Remembering the verses that Hayley sung
When my heart knocked against the root of my
tongue,
With angels planted in hawthorn bowers,
And God himself in the passing hours;
With silver angels across my way,
And golden demons that none can stay;
With my father hovering upon the wind.
And my brother Robert just behind,
And my brother John, the evil one,2
In a black cloud making his moan;
(Though dead, they appear upon my path,
Notwithstanding my terrible wrath;
They beg, they entreat, they drop their tears,
Filled full of hopes, filled full of fears ;)
With a thousand angels upon the wind,
Pouring disconsolate from behind
From a letter to Mr. Butts, dated towards November, 1802. The verses (Blake says) "were composed above & twelvemonth ago, while walking from Felpham to Lavant, to meet my sister."
2 The eldest brother, who enlisted as a soldier.
To drive them off,-and before my way
A frowning Thistle implores my stay.
What to others a trifle appears
Fills me full of smiles or tears;
For double the vision my eyes do see,
And a double vision is always with me.
With my inward eye, 'tis an old man grey;
With my outward, a thistle across my way.
"If thou goest back," the Thistle said,
"Thou art to endless woe betrayed;
For here does Theotormon lour,
And here is Enitharmon's bower,1
And Los the terrible thus hath sworn,
Because thou backward dost return,
Poverty, envy, old age, and fear,
Shall bring thy wife upon a bier;
And Butts shall give what Fuseli gave,
A dark black rock and a gloomy cave."
I struck the thistle with my foot,
And broke him up from his delving root.
"Must the duties of life each other cross?
Must every joy be dung and dross?
Must my dear Butts feel cold neglect
Because I give Hayley his due respect?
Must Flaxman look upon me as wild,
And all my friends be with doubts beguiled?
Must my wife live in my sister's bane,
Or my sister survive on my Love's pain?
The curses of Los, the terrible shade,
And his dismal terrors, make me afraid."
1 Enitharmon and Los are Space and Time.
So I spoke, and struck in my wrath The old man weltering upon my path. Then Los appeared in all his power: In the sun he appeared, descending before My face in fierce flames; in my double sight, 'Twas outward a sun, — inward, Los in his
“My hands are laboured day and night,
And ease comes never in my sight.
My wife has no indulgence given,
Except what comes to her from heaven.
We eat little, we drink less;
This earth breeds not our happiness.
Another sun feeds our life's streams;
We are not warmed with thy beams.
Thou measurest not the time to me,
Nor yet the space that I do see:
My mind is not with thy light arrayed;
Thy terrors shall not make me afraid."
When I had my defiance given, The sun stood trembleing in heaven ; The moon, that glowed remote below, Became leprous and white as snow; And every soul of man on the earth
Felt affliction and sorrow and sickness and dearth. Los flamed in my path, and the sun was hot With the bows of my mind and the arrows of
My bowstring fierce with ardour breathes,
My arrows glow in their golden sheaves.
My brother and father march before;
The heavens drop with human gore.
Now I a fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
"Tis fourfold in my supreme delight,
And threefold in soft Beulah's night,
And twofold always. May God us keep
From single vision, and Newton's sleep!
H why was I born with a different face? Why was I not born like the rest of my race?
When I look, each one starts; when I speak, I offend;
Then I'm silent and passive, and lose every friend.
Then my verse I dishonour, my pictures despise ;
My person degrade, and my temper chastise;
And the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame;
All my talents I bury, and dead is my fame.
I am either too low or too highly prized;
When elate I am envied, when meek I'm despised.
I These verses are contained in Blake's last extant letter from Felpham, dated 16th August 1803. They refer to differences which had arisen between himself and some of his acquaintances, particularly Hayley.
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