The Portable Blake

by William Blake

  With Faces of Scorn & with Eyes of disdain

  Like foul Fiends inhabiting Mary’s mild Brain;

  She remembers no Face like the Human Divine.

  All Faces have Envy, sweet Mary, but thine;

  And thine is a Face of sweet Love in despair,

  And thine is a Face of mild sorrow & care,

  And thine is a Face of wild terror & fear

  That shall never be quiet till laid on its bier.

  THE LAND. OF DREAMS

  Awake, awake, my little Boy!

  Thou wast thy Mother’s only joy;

  Why dost thou weep in thy gentle sleep?

  Awake! thy Father does thee keep.

  “O, what Land is the Land of Dreams?

  What are its Mountains & what are its Streams?

  O Father, I saw my Mother there,

  Among the Lillies by waters fair.

  “Among the Lambs, clothed in white,

  She walk’d with her Thomas in sweet delight.

  I wept for joy, like a dove I mourn;

  O! when shall I again return?”

  Dear Child, I also by pleasant Streams

  Have wander’d all Night in the Land of Dreams;

  But tho’ calm & warm the waters wide,

  I could not get to the other side.

  “Father, O Father! what do we here

  In this Land of unbelief & fear?

  The Land of Dreams is better far,

  Above the light of the Morning Star.”

  DEDICATION OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS TO BLAIR’S GRAVE

  TO THE QUEEN

  The Door of Death is made of Gold,

  That Mortal Eyes cannot behold;

  But, when the Mortal Eyes are clos‘d,

  And cold and pale the Limbs repos’d,

  The Soul awakes; and, wond’ring, sees

  In her mild Hand the golden Keys:

  The Grave is Heaven’s golden Gate,

  And rich and poor around it wait;

  O Shepherdess of England’s Fold,

  Behold this Gate of Pearl and Gold!

  To dedicate to England’s Queen

  The Visions that my Soul has seen,

  And, by Her kind permission, bring

  What I have borne on solemn Wing

  From the vast regions of the Grave,

  Before Her Throne my Wings I wave;

  Bowing before my Sov’reign’s Feet,

  “The Grave produc’d these Blossoms sweet

  In mild repose from Earthly strife;

  The Blossoms of Eternal Lifel”

  If it is True, what the Prophets write,

  That the heathen Gods are all stocks & stones,

  Shall we, for the sake of being Polite,

  Feed them with the juice of our marrow bones?

  And if Bezaleel & Aholiab drew

  What the Finger of God pointed to their View,

  Shall we suffer the Roman & Grecian Rods

  To compell us to worship them as Gods?

  They stole them from the Temple of the Lord,

  And Worshipp’d them that they might make

  Inspired Art Abhorr’d.

  The Wood & Stone were call’d The Holy Things

  And their Sublime Intent given to their Kings,

  All the Atonements of Jehovah spurn’d,

  And Criminals to Sacrifices Turn’d.

  Why was Cupid a Boy

  And why a boy was he?

  He should have been a Girl

  For ought that I can see.

  For he shoots with his bow,

  And the Girl shoots with her Eye,

  And they both are merry & glad

  And laugh when we do cry.

  And to make Cupid a Boy

  Was the Cupid Girl’s mocking plan;

  For a boy can’t interpret the thing

  Till he is become a man.

  And then he’s so pierc’d with cares

  And wounded with arrowy smarts,

  That the whole business of his life

  Is to pick out the heads of the darts.

  ‘Twas the Greeks’ love of war

  Turn’d Love into a Boy,

  And Woman into a Statue of Stone—

  And away flew every Joy.

  When a Man has Married a Wife, he finds out whether

  Her knees & elbows are only glewed together.

  ON THE VIRGINITY OF THE VIRGIN MARY & JOHANNA SOUTHCOTT

  Whate‘er is done to her she cannot know,

  And if you’ll ask her she will swear it so.

  Whether ’tis good or evil none’s to blame:

  No one can take the pride, no one the shame.

  Grown old in Love from Seven till Seven times Seven,

  I oft have wish’d for Hell for Ease from Heaven.

  Since all the Riches of this World

  May be gifts from the Devil & Earthly Kings,

  I should suspect that I worship’d the Devil

  If I thank’d my God for Worldly things.

  Nail his neck to the Cross: nail it with a nail.

  Nail his neck to the Cross: ye all have power over his tail.

  The Caverns of the Grave I’ve seen,

  And these I shew’d to England’s Queen.

  But now the Caves of Hell I view:

  Who shall I dare to shew them to?

  What mighty Soul in Beauty’s form

  Shall dauntless View the Infernal Storm?

  Egremont’s Countess can controll

  The flames of Hell that round me roll.

  If she refuse, I still go on

  Till the Heavens & Earth are gone,

  Still admir’d by Noble minds,

  Follow’d by Envy on the winds,

  Re-engrav’d Time after Time,

  Ever in their youthful prime,

  My designs unchang’d remain.

  Time may rage but rage in vain.

  Far above Time’s troubled Fountains

  On the Great Atlantic Mountains,

  In my Golden House on high,

  There they Shine Eternally.

  I rose up at the dawn of day—

  Get thee away! get thee away!

  Pray’st thou for Riches? away! away!

  This is the Throne of Mammon grey.

  Said I, “This sure is very odd.

  I took it to be the Throne of God.

  For every Thing besides I have:

  It is only for Riches that I can crave.

  “I have Mental Joy & Mental Health

  And Mental Friends & Mental wealth;

  I’ve a Wife I love & that loves me;

  I’ve all but Riches Bodily.

  “I am in God’s presence night & day,

  And he never turns his face away.

  The accuser of sins by my side does stand

  ”And he holds my money bag in his hand.

  “For my worldly things God makes him pay,

  And he’d pay more if to him I would pray;

  And so you may do the worst you can do:

  Be assur’d Mr. devil I won’t pray to you.

  “Then If for Riches I must not Pray,

  Cod knows I little of Prayers need say.

  So as a Church is known by its Steeple,

  If I pray it must be for other People.

  “He says, if I do not worship him for a God,

  I shall eat coarser food & go worse shod;

  So as I don’t value such things as these,

  You must do, Mr. devil, just as God please.”

  V.

  SELECTIONS FROM THE LETTERS

  LETTERS

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  Blake’s letters are no more personal than his other writing; he threw the full power of his personality, and its unwaking dream, into everything he did. But unlike so much of his other work, the letters show his encounter with the world. Here he is in the society he usually defied; it is one of the few glimpses we have of him in relation to others. Here Blake is not the lord of his own
creations, a man always ready to console himself for the uniqueness of his thoughts by his own pleasure in them. He is a man talking to other men—reporting on the progress of work in hand, giving technical advice to interested craftsmen, inquiring after the health of a patron, hinting at the possibility of a sale. On occasion he is even ready to have a mutual conversation about his work, as from one man of good sense to another. He never adjusts his views to the correspondent’s measure, but with the stiff and old-fashioned courtesy of his class, and out of his abundant good nature, shows himself a man ready for friendship.

  Yet Blake had almost no friends; he had only admirers and enemies, patrons and colleagues. At the end, thanks to his young admirer John Linnell, there were even disciples. Friendship to him meant tolerance and encouragement of his work. The friends of his visions were his friends, and he was always ready to believe in another’s friendship where the usual skepticism or indifference was missing. He was touchingly grateful to anyone who took him seriously. “As to Myself, about whom you are so kindly interested, I live by miracle.” When he is happy at a favor, he puts a poem into a letter. “Happiness stretch’d forth across the hills.” It is not hard to believe that his happiness often did, when he felt the world would receive him. Yet these are primarily business letters. Blake was a man who never stopped thinking and working. A letter to him was the sixth finger of the hand which gave his message to the world.

  Most of the letters are either to artists who befriended him—George Cumberland, John Flaxman the sculptor, Ozias Humphry, John Linnell; or to patrons like William Hayley and Thomas Butts. What is perhaps the greatest single letter, Blake’s defense and exposition of his imagination to the Reverend John Trusler, beginning “I really am sorry that you are fallen out with the spiritual world,” was written after the Reverend had expressed dissatisfaction with illustrations he had commissioned Blake to do for him. The nature of the Reverend Trusler’s work may be guessed from the titles of two of his books—Hogarth Moralized and The Way To Be Rich and Respectable. When he received the letter he added, Blake, dim’d with superstition.

  Thomas Butts (1759-1846), the great patron of Blake’s middle period, was a wealthy and genial official who filled his house in Fitzroy Square with Blake’s pictures. For many years he bought Blake’s work regularly, sometimes taking a drawing a week, until he did not have room on his walls for more. Butts, though he was sometimes made uneasy by Blake’s radicalism, thought well of him and tried in many ways to help him. At one period he engaged Blake to teach drawing to his son, Thomas, Junior. The Butts and Blake families got on amiably, and Butts became one of the great supports of the artist’s life. The son, however, thought so little of Blake’s work that he sold the original “inventions” to The Book of Job, as well as many other pictures.

  William Hayley (1745-1820), who seems in the end to have exasperated Blake more than anyone he ever knew, was a sentimental and interminable versifier, author of the popular The Triumphs of Temper, lives of Cowper and Romney, and endless memorials to himself and his illegitimate son, Thomas Alphonso. Hayley, from all reports, seems to have been one of the most notorious bores of the age: a sententious squire who delivered himself of poetic epistles on all subjects. Byron said that his work was “for ever feeble and for ever tame”; Blake’s account of their relations portrays a sentimental and stubborn mediocrity who employed him for a variety of jobs but seems never to have understood the talent he exploited. It was Hayley who made possible Blake’s three-year stay at the Felpham cottage, in Sussex. There Blake worked, with pathetic gratitude for a chance to live in the country, at illustrations to Hayley’s life of Cowper and Hayley’s Ballads (“Founded on Anecdotes Relating to Animals”), as well as many other tasks which he could finally no longer endure. One of his first commissions for Hayley was to decorate the library of the “Bard” with eighteen heads, nearly of life size, of the great poets—among them the bewept image of the son, Thomas Alphonso, encircled by doves. In the end Hayley’s complacency and interference got so on Blake’s nerves that he thought it better to return to London.

  John Flaxman (1755-1826), one of the earliest and most important of Blake’s artist friends, was one of the most important of eighteenth-century sculptors and designers, and as important to the art of his day as Blake was generally ignored by it. His delicate and “classical” illustrations to Homer are probably his best work, but the churches of England are full of his memorials and monuments.

  George Cumberland (the elder), was the author of Thoughts on Outline, which Blake helped to illustrate and one of the first proponents of the National Gallery. He was a devoted friend to Blake, and may have suggested the engraving technique that Blake developed into his unique method of “illuminated printing.” The last engraving Blake ever did was a message card, or bookplate, for Cumberland.

  Ozias Humphry (1742-1810), was one of the most famous of English miniature painters, and despite his own respectability, a great admirer of Blake’s. Humphry obtained the commission from the Countess of Egremont that led to the tempera of The Last Judgment, described here in his letter of thanks to Humphry.

  Richard Phillips, to whom Blake wrote a defense of his friend Fuseli’s painting that became a characteristic attack on the painters of the period, was the editor of The Monthly Magazine and a bookseller.

  John Linnell (1792-1882), a portrait and landscape painter, became the great support of Blake’s old age, and introduced him to many young painters in the 1820’s who admired and copied Blake. Linnell was one of Blake’s most understanding and affectionate friends. He commissioned the illustrations to The Book of Job and the designs from The Divine Comedy, as well as a series of water-color drawings to Paradise Regained and other work. Linnell was so devoted to Blake that he wanted to name one of his sons after him. There is a fine letter by Linnell, written in 1830 to the Quaker poet, Bernard Barton, who had dedicated a sonnet to Linnell in gratitude for his kindness to Blake. Linnell declined to accept the dedication, saying that he did not deserve it, and added of Blake: “I never in all my conversations with him could for a moment feel that there was the least justice in calling him insane; he could always explain his paradoxes satisfactorily when he pleased, but to many he spoke so that ‘hearing they might not hear.’ He was more like the ancient patterns of virtue than I ever expected to see in this world; he feared nothing so much as being rich, lest he should lose his spiritual riches.”

  TO GEORGE CUMBERLAND

  Lambeth

  6 Decembr. 1795

  DEAR SIR,

  I congratulate you, not on any atchievement, because I know that the Genius that produces the Designs can execute them in any manner, notwithstanding the pretended Philosophy which teaches that Execution is the power of One & Invention of Another—Locke says it is the same faculty that Invents Judges, & I say he who can Invent can Execute.

  As to laying on the Wax, it is as follows:

  Take a cake of Virgin’s Wax (I don’t know what animal produces it) & stroke it regularly over the surface of a warm plate (the Plate must be warm enough to melt the Wax as it passes over), then immediately draw a feather over it & you will get an even surface which, when cold, will receive any impression minutely.

  NOTE: The danger is in not covering the plate all over.

  Now you will, I hope, shew all the family of Antique Borers that Peace & Plenty & Domestic Happiness is the Source of Sublime Art, & prove to the Abstract Philosophers that Enjoyment & not Abstinence is the food of Intellect.

  Yours sincerely,

  WILL BLAKE.

  Health to Mrs. Cumberland & family.

  The pressure necessary to roll off the lines is the same as when you print, or not quite so great. I have not been able to send a proof of the bath tho’ I have done the corrections, my paper not being in order.

  TO THE REVD. DR. TRUSLER

  Hercules Buildgs., Lambeth,

  Augst. 16, 1799.

  REVD. SIR,

  I find more & more that my
Style of Designing is a Species by itself, & in this which I send you have been compell’d by my Genius or Angel to follow where he led; if I were to act otherwise it would not fulfil the purpose for which alone I live, which is, in conjunction with such men as my friend Cumberland, to renew the lost art of the Greeks.

  I attempted every morning for a fortnight together to follow your Dictate, but when I found my attempts were in vain, resolv’d to shew an independence which I know will please an Author better than slavishly following the track of another, however admirable that track may be. At any rate, my Excuse must be: I could not do otherwise; it was out of my power!

  I know I begged of you to give me your Ideas, & promised to build on them; here I counted without my host. I now find my mistake.

  The Design I have sent Is:

  A Father, taking leave of his Wife & Child, Is watch’d by Two Fiends incarnate, with intention that when his back is turned they will murder the mother & her infant. If this is not Malevolence with a vengeance, I have never seen it on Earth; & if you approve of this, I have no doubt of giving you Benevolence with Equal Vigor, as also Pride & Humility, but cannot previously describe in words what I mean to Design, for fear I should Evaporate the spirit of my Invention. But I hope that none of my Designs will be destitute of Infinite Particulars which will present themselves to the Contemplator. And tho’ I call them Mine, I know that they are not Mine, being of the same opinion with Milton when he says That the Muse visits his slumbers & awakes & governs his song when Morn purples the East, & being also in the predicament of that prophet who says: “I cannot go beyond the command of ”the Lord, to speak good or bad.”