18th Century British Literature and Religion ~ 1st Generation

Purpose of art:

• Expand your mind
• Give you insight and knowledge about things you would not already know about
• Express feelings and desires
• Describe the culture
• Make people think about controversial issues
• All can be grouped under 2 basic functions
• Reflect society
• Change society
• Romantic poets are all about changing society. Changing something they hate. It is essential to know what they are trying to change.
• Paradigm
• interested in changing society’s paradigm
• lens through which you view the world 
• priorities
• change their society
• Paradigm {Mystical / Rational} = Lens
• Mystical way of viewing the world and the rational way of viewing the world
• Romantics are living in an extremely rational society.
• 18th Century 
• Age of Reason
• Romantics are tying to swing the pendulum back to the mystical paradigm.

...but first...

14th Century

• Time of Chaucer
• The little ice age started.
• War 
• 100 Years War (with France)
• Disease 
• Bubonic Plague (Black Death)
• Mystical paradigm
• If bad or good things happen, you had it coming.
• The little optimum before the little ice age - 10th-13th Centuries
• War
• constant drain on the economy
• Britain lost.
• Crops are failing.

• Peasants are dying because they live with the rats.
• Good people are dying,
• so they re-evaluated their mystical paradigm.
• Peasants gained power.
• Church seized properties, or all people dying because they all must be sinners.
• People started thinking logically.
• Plague must be contagious. 
• switch to the rational paradigm
• renaissance
• Things are good.

17th Century

• War and disease
• Civil War
• Cromwell chased Puritans out of Britain.
• Black Death is back, 1665.
• Nursery rhyme: "Ring around the rosy / pocket full of posy / ashes, ashes / we all fall down"
• Fire of 1666
• 1688: Glorious Revolution 
• called that because it was a bloodless revolution  
• Parliament institutes the Glorious Revolution. 
• William and Mary took over.
• James II ran.
• Mary was James II daughter. 
• This was the beginning of the age of reason because when they came to the throne, all of the problems seemed to melt away.
• Life becomes good again in the 18th century partly from legislation passed.
• partly from mere coincidence

...and finally...

18th Century

• French Revolution – 1789 
• No planning, no structure 
• no formal training, just raw emotion 
• A couple of hundred peasants overthrew the French system in one day.
• Rational 
• reason over emotion
• Establishment is a machine that says what is right, and emotion is not right.

Blake

• Blake had written his own bible.
• his own mythology
• Blake felt that humans have no control.

• Songs of Experience

• “Introduction”

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walk’d among the ancient trees,
Calling the lapsed Soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might controll
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!
“O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.
“Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The wat’ry shore,
Is giv’n thee till the break of day.”



~ --oOo-- ~

• “Earth’s Answer”

Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread & drear.
Her light fled,
Stony dread!
And her locks cover’d with grey despair.

“Prison’d on wat’ry shore,
Starry Jealousy does keep my den:
Cold and hoar,
Weeping o’er,
I hear the father of the ancient men.

“Selfish father of men!
Cruel, jealous, selfish fear!
Can delight,
Chain’d in night,
The virgins of youth and morning bear?

“Does spring hide its joy
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower
Sow by night,
Or the plowman in darkness plow?

“Break this heavy chain
That does freeze my bones around.
Selfish! vain!
Eternal bane!
That free Love with bondage bound.”



~ --oOo-- ~

• “The Clod and the Pebble”

“Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

So sung a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle’s feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

“Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”



~ --oOo-- ~

• “Holy Thursday”

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

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be 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 were-e’er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.



~ --oOo-- ~

• “The Little Girl Lost”

In futurity
I prophetic see
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)

Shall arise and seek
For her maker meek;
And in the desart wild
Become a garden mild.

* * *

In the southern clime,
Where the summer’s prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.

Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told;
She had wander’d long
Hearing wild birds’ song.

“Sweet sleep, come to me
Underneath this tree.
Do father, mother weep,
Where can Lyca sleep?

“Lost in desart wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?

“If her heart does ake
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.

“Frowning, frowning night,
O’er this desart bright
Let thy moon arise
While I close my eyes.”

Sleeping Lyca lay
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
View’d the maid asleep.

The kingly lion stood
And the virgin view’d,
Then he gamboll’d round
O’er the hollow’d ground.

Leopards, tygers, play
Round her as she lay,
While the lion old
Bow’d his mane of gold.

And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck
From his eyes of flame
Ruby tears there came;

While the lioness
Loos’d her slender dress,
And naked they convey’d
To caves the sleeping maid.



~ --oOo-- ~

• “The Little Girl Found”

All the night in woe
Lyca’s parents go
Over vallies deep,
While the desarts weep.

Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm seven days
They trac’d the desart ways.

Seven nights they sleep
Among the shadows deep,
And dream they see their child
Starv’d in desart wild.

Pale, thro’ pathless ways
The fancied image strays
Famish’d, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.

Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman prest
With feet of weary woe:
She could no further go.

In his arms he bore
Her, arm’s with sorrow sore;
Till before their way
A couching lion lay.

Turning back was vain:
Soon his heavy mane
Bore them to the ground.
Then he stalk’d around,

Smelling to his prey;
But their fears allay
When he licks their hands,
And silent by them stands.

They look upon his eyes
Fill’d with deep surprise,
And wondering behold
A spirit arm’d in gold.

On his head a crown,
On his shoulders down
Flow’d his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.

“Follow me,” he said;
“Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep
Lyca lies asleep.”

Then they followed
Where the vision led,
And saw their sleeping child
Among the tygers wild.

To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell;
Nor fear the wolvish howl
Nor the lion’s growl.



~ --oOo-- ~

• “The Chimney Sweep”

A little black thing among the snow,
Crying “’weep! ’weep!” in notes of woe!
“Where are thy father & mother? say?”
“They are both gone up to the church to pray.

“Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil’d among the winter’s snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

“And because I am happy & dance & sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery.”



~ --oOo-- ~

• “Nurse's Song”

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And whisp’rings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Your spring & your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.



~ --oOo-- ~

• “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.



~ --oOo-- ~

• “The Fly”

Little Fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brush’d away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance,
And drink, & sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life,
And strength & breath,
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live
or if I die.



~ --oOo-- ~

• “The Angel”

I dreamt a Dream! what can it mean!
And that I was a maiden Queen,
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne’er beguil’d!

And I wept both night and day,
And he wip’d my tears away,
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart’s delight.

So he took his wings and fled;
Then the morn blush’d rosy red;
I dried my tears, & arm’d my fears
With ten thousand shields and spears.

Soon my Angel came again:
I was arm’d, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.



~ --oOo-- ~

• “The Tyger”

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

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?

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?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

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?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?



~ --oOo-- ~

• “ My Pretty Rose-Tree”

A flower was offer’d to me,
Such a flower as May never bore;
But I said “I’ve a Pretty Rose-tree,”
And I passed the sweet flower o’er.

Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree,
To tend her by day and by night;
But my Rose turn’d away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight.



~ --oOo-- ~

• “Ah! Sun-Flower”

Ah, Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done:

Where the Youth pined away with desire
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.



~ --oOo-- ~

“The Lily”

The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,
The humble Sheep a threat’ning horn;
While the Lilly white shall in Love delight,
Nor a thorn, nor a threat, stain her beauty bright.



~ --oOo-- ~

• Blake thinks he is a prophet – 
• he as exalted himself from others
• Stars are predictable – 
• water is not predictable

• “The Garden of Love”

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys & desires.



~ --oOo-- ~

• sexuality – 
• victim of the church – 
• found spirituality in sexuality

"London"

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.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every black’ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Little Vagabond"

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm;
Besides I can tell where I am used well,
Such usage in Heaven will never do well.

But if at the Church they would give us some Ale,
And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,
We’d sing and we’d pray all the live-long day,
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray.

Then the Parson might preach, & drink, & sing,
And we’d be as happy as birds in the spring;
And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at Church,
Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.

And God, like a father rejoicing to see
His children as pleasant and happy as he,
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel,
But kiss him, & give him both drink and apparel.


~ --oOo-- ~

"London"

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.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every black’ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.


~ --oOo-- ~

"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.

And mutual fear brings peace,
Till the selfish loves increase:
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

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

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
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
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.


~ --oOo-- ~

"Infant Sorrow"

My mother groan’d! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud:
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my father’s hands,
Striving against my swadling bands,
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mother’s breast.

~ --oOo-- ~

"A Poison Tree"

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.

~ --oOo-- ~

"A Little Boy Lost"

“Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to Thought
A greater than itself to know:

“And Father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door.”

The Priest sat by and heard the child,
In trembling zeal he siez’d his hair:
He led him by his little coat,
And all admir’d the Priestly care.

And standing on the altar high,
“Lo! what a fiend is here!” said he,
“One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy Mystery.”

The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain;
They strip’d him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain;
And burn’d him in a holy place,
Where many had been burn’d before:
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such things done on Albion’s shore?

~ --oOo-- ~

"A Little Girl Lost"

Children of the future Age
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.

In the Age of Gold,
Free from winter’s cold,
Youth and maiden bright
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair,
Fill’d with softest care,
Met in garden bright
Where the holy light
Had just remov’d the curtains of night.

There, in rising day,
On the grass they play;
Parents were afar,
Strangers came not near,
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

Tired with kisses sweet,
They agree to meet
When the silent sleep
Waves o’er heaven’s deep,
And the weary tired wanderers weep.

To her father white
Came the maiden bright;
But his loving look,
Like the holy book,
All her tender limbs with terror shook.

“Ona! pale and weak!
To thy father speak:
O, the trembling fear!
O, the dismal care!
That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair.”

~ --oOo-- ~

"To Tirzah"

Whate’er is Born of Mortal Birth
Must be consumed with the Earth
To rise from Generation free:
Then what have I to do with thee?

The Sexes sprung from Shame & Pride,
Blow’d in the morn, in evening died;
But Mercy chang’d Death into Sleep;
The Sexes rose to work & weep.

Thou, Mother of my Mortal part,
With cruelty didst mould my Heart,
And with false self-deceiving tears
Didst bind my Nostrils, Eyes, & Ears:

Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay,
And me to Mortal Life betray.
The Death of Jesus set me free:
Then what have I to do with thee?

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Schoolboy"

I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me.
O! what sweet company.

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour,
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning’s bower,
Worn thro’ with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?

O! father & mother, if buds are nip’d
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are strip’d
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and care’s dismay,

How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Voice of the Ancient Bard"

Youth of delight, come hither,
And see the opening morn,
Image of truth new born.
Doubt is fled, & clouds of reason,
Dark disputes & artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze,
Tangled roots perplex her ways.
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead,
And feel they know not what but care,
And wish to lead others, when they should be led.

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Divine Image"

Cruelty has a Human Heart,
And Jealousy a Human Face;
Terror the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy the Human Dress.

The Human Dress is forged Iron,
The Human Form a fiery Forge,
The Human Face a Furnace seal’d,
The Human Heart is hungry Gorge.

~ --oOo-- ~

Blake’s mythology – each romantic views the world in this way:

• He is above the real where everyone else is.
• He believed if everybody imagined the same thing at the same time, there would be a new heaven and earth.
• He received the idea from the storming of the Bastille.
• He believed in the distant past we were all in the human form divine.
• He blamed the clergy (church) for our fall. 
• He believed we are born in the real world.

Rational=Emotional Imaginative

• Blake is saying don’t get rid of the rational.
• We need both.
• He thought we need balance.
• He believed the rational suppresses emotional.
• The pessimistic poetry convinces people of their own true fate so they will all think the same thing at the same time.

"Songs of Innocence"

• are happy and sweet
• the yin to the yang

• "Introduction"

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

“Pipe a song about a Lamb!”
So I piped with a merry chear.
“Piper, pipe that song again;”
So I piped: he wept to hear.

“Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy chear:”
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

“Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.”
So he vanish'd from my sight,
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear.

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Shepherd"

How sweet is the Shepherd's sweet lot!
From the morn to the evening he strays;
He shall follow his sheep all the day,
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.

For he hears the lamb's innocent call,
And he hears the ewe's tender reply;
He is watchful while they are in peace,
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Echoing Green"

The Sun does arise,
And make happy the skies;
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring;
The skylark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing lounder around
To the bells' chearful sound,
While our sports shall be seen
On the Echoing Green.

Old John, with white hair,
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk.
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say:
“Such, such were the joys
When we all, girls & boys,
In our youth time were seen
On the Echoing Green.”

Till the little ones, weary,
No more can be merry;
The sun does descend,
And our sports have on end.
Round the laps of their mothers
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest,
And sports no more seen
On the darkening Green.

~ --oOo-- ~

"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;
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?
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.
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!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Little Black Boy"

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east, began to say:

“Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives his light, and gives his heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

“And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

“For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice,
Saying: ‘Come out from the grove, my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.’”

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy:
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him,and he will then love me.

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Blossom"

Merry, Merry Sparrow!
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Sees you swift as arrow
Seek your cradle narrow
Near my Bosom.

Pretty, Pretty Robin!
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Hears you sobbing, sobbing,
Pretty, Pretty Robin,
Near my Bosom.

~ --oOo-- ~

"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 like a lamb's back, was shav'd: so I said
“Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when you 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, & 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 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.

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Little Boy Lost"

“Father! father! where are you going?
O do not walk so fast.
Speak, father, speak to your little boy,
Or else I shall be lost.”

The night was dark, no father was there;
The child was wet with dew;
The mire was deep, & the child did weep,
And away the vapour flew.

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Little Boy Found"

The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wand'ring light,
Began to cry; but God, ever nigh,
Appear'd like his father in white.

He kissed the child & by the hand led
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow pale, thro' the lonely dale,
Her little boy weeping sought.

~ --oOo-- ~

"A Laughing Song"

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing “Ha, Ha, He!”

When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread,
Come live & be merry, and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of “Ha, Ha, He!”

~ --oOo-- ~

"A Cradle Song"

Sweet dreams, form a shade
O'er my lovely infant's head;
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams
By happy, silent, moony beams.

Sweet sleep, with soft down
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweep sleep, Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles, in the night
Hover over my delight;
Sweet smiles, Mother's smiles,
All the livelong night beguiles.

Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes.
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the dovelike moans beguiles.

Sleep, sleep, happy child,
All creation slept and smil'd;
Sleep, sleep, happy sleep,
While o'er thee thy mother weep.

Sweet babe, in thy face
Holy image I can trace.
Sweet babe, once like thee,
Thy maker lay and wept for me,

Wept for me, for thee, for all,
When he was an infant small
Thou his image ever see,
Heavenly face that smiles on thee,

Smiles on thee, on me, on all;
Who became an infant small.
Infant smiles are his own smiles;
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles.

~ --oOo-- ~

"The Divine Image"

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

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,
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,
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
There God is dwelling too.

~ --oOo-- ~

"Holy Thursday"

'T was on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green,
Grey-headed beadles walk'd before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames' waters flow.

O what a multitude they seem'd, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

~ --oOo-- ~

"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,
Receive 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.”

~ --oOo-- ~

"Spring"

Sound the Flute!
Now it's mute.
Birds delight
Day and Night;
Nightingale
In the dale,
Lark in Sky,
Merrily,
Merrily, Merrily, to welcome in the Year.

Little Boy,
Full of joy;
Little Girl,
Sweet and small;
Cock does crow,
So do you;
Merry voice,
Infant noise,
Merrily, Merrily, to welcome in the Year.

Little Lamb,
Here I am;
Come and lick
My white neck;
Let me pull
Your soft Wool;
Let me kiss
Your soft face:
Merrily, Merrily, we welcome in the Year.

~ --oOo-- ~

"Nurse's Song"

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still.

“Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.”

“No, no, let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep.”

“Well, well, go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed.”
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd
And all the hills echoed.

~ --oOo-- ~

"Infant Joy"

“I have no name:
I am but two days old.”
What shall I call thee?
“I happy am,
Joy is my name.”
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old,
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while,
Sweet joy befall thee!

~ --oOo-- ~

"A Dream"

Once a dream did weave a shade
O'er my Angel-guarded bed,
That an Emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.

Troubled, 'wilder'd, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangled spray,
All heart-broken I heard her say:

“O, my children! do they cry?
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see:
Now return and weep for me.”

Pitying, I drop'd a tear;
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied: “What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?

“I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle's hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home.”

~ --oOo-- ~

"On Another's Sorrow"

Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow's share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd?

Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

And can he who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird's grief & care,
Hear the woes that infants bear,

And not sit beside the nest,
Pouring pity in their breast;
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant's tear;

And not sit both night & day,
Wiping all our tears away?
O, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

He doth give his joy to all;
He becomes an infant small;
He becomes a man of woe;
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh
And thy maker is not by;
Think not thou canst weep a tear
And thy maker is not near.

O! he gives to us his joy
That our grief he may destroy;
Till our grief is fled & gone
He doth sit by us and moan.

~ --oOo-- ~

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a simplistically written satire against self-righteous members of the society and Orthodox Christianity.

"The Argument"

"The Voice of the Devil"

"A Memorable Fancy"

"Proverbs Of Hell"

"A Memorable Fancy"

"A Song Of Liberty"




~ --oOo-- ~

• The human form divine is the perfect balance between the rational and the emotional.
• Emotional – imaginative – energy – are falsely labeled evil.
• So he writes the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
• the marriage of emotional and rational
• His writing is over the top because he as a big job ahead of him.

• “The Argument”

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden'd air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow,
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.
Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river and a spring
On every cliff and tomb:
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.
Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.
Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility,
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden'd air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thir­ty-three years since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the Angel sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return of Adam into Paradise: see Isaiah xxxiv & xxxv Chap: 

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. 

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. 

Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.



~ --oOo-- ~

• Rintrah is Elijah from the Old Testament and John the Baptist.
• They are preparing the way for Christ.
• Then Christ was born of man.
• Then the church was born causing chaos.
• Now, the French Revolution has begun.
• "The Argument" is prophetic sounding because he sees himself as a prophet.
• Plate 3
• Blake sees himself as Christ-like.
• He is going to show us the way back into paradise.
• Opposites are good and are needed for human existence.
• When Blake says religious, he mans the fallen world (deities, church, etc.).
• The voice of the devil (the voice of the human form divine)
• Contraries

• Energy and emotion are the helium.
• Reason is the rubber part of the balloon. 
• You cannot separate them. 
• They cannot work without one another.
• Birds are important symbols because they can fly.
• Blake accepts good and evil but reverses its values. 
• Hell offers freedom, energy, abundance, and actions. 
• Heaven offers reason, restraint, passivity, and prohibition.
• Blake states that real good is a marriage of restraint and desire, energy and reason.
• Blake truly believed that he was born at the time of the Last Judgment and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
• At this time, Blake was the age at which Christ had been resurrected
• There is no progression without contraries -
• attraction / repulsion
• reason / energy
• love / hate
• Good is heaven. / Evil is hell.

• "The Voice of the Devil" (Plate 4)

All Bibles or sacred codes, have been the causes of the following Errors.

1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

But the following Contraries to these are True.

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer of reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.

And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.

The history of this written in Paradise Lost, & the Governor of Reason is call'd Messiah.

And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the heavenly host, is call'd the Devil or Satan and his children are call'd Sin & Death.

But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd Satan.

For this history has been adopted by both parties.

It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devils account is that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.

This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire.

Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.

But in Milton' the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Raio of the five senses, & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum! Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.


~ --oOo-- ~

• Errors in the Bible
• Man has two existing principles – body / soul.
• Energy is from the body.
• Evil / reason is from the soul – good.
• Good will torment man for his energy.
• Contraries
• Man has no body without soul. Body is portion of soul – with 5 senses – the inlets of soul.
• Energy is the ONLY life. From body, reason is the bound energy.
• Energy is eternal delight.

• "A Memorable Fancy"

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their Proverbs; thinking that as the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell, shew the nature in Infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments,

When I came home: on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,

Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?




~ --oOo-- ~

• What does he want us to know?
• “How do you know but ev’ry  Bird that cuts the airy way/ Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?”
• Birds are free. 
• There are two ways to look at a bird.
• rational
• emotional
• We use our scientific minds and close off our emotional and imagination.
• We close ourselves off to beauty.

• "Proverbs of Hell"

• "Proverbs of Hell" show the nature of wisdom
• Blake sees himself as the devil that must spread the word

"In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by incapacity
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence
The cut worm forgives the plow
Dip him in the river who loves water
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees
He whose face gives no light, shall never be a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time
The busy bee has no time for sorrow
The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
All wholsom food is caught without a net or trap.
Bring out number, weight, & measure in a year of dearth
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings
A dead body revenges not injuries
The most sublime act is to set another before you
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloke of knavery
Shame is Pride’s cloke.

~ --oOo-- - ~ 

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish smiling fool, & the sullen frowning fool, shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit: watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.
The cistern contains; the fountain overflows.
One thought, fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

~ --oOo-- ~

The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight, can never be defil'd.
When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius, lift up thy head!
As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn, braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!

~ --oOo-- ~

The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
Enough! or Too much!

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.
And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity.
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects; thus began Priesthood.
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And a length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast."

~ --oOo-- ~

• Plate 8 
• line 1
• If we didn’t have religion and laws there would be no rules to break.
• Rational is what makes emotions bad.
• line 13
• self explanatory
• To be foolish is to follow emotions but he says it will make one wise.
• Plate 9
• line 7
• Don’t limit yourself. 
• You never know what you are capable of if you do not push yourself.
• Plate 11
• Ancient poets...
• created gods.
• placed cities and countries under its mental deity this enslaved man.
• Priesthood was born because of this.
• Worship came from poetic tales.
• told man the gods ordered such things.
• Men forgot that gods reside in the human breast.
• The poets were created of human form divine.
• We fell by separation.
• Religious structure is a power play.
• line 9
• Without your inner light, you are just there.
• line 4 
• If you are prudent, you have not been tempted.

• "A Memorable Fancy"

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answer'd, I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then perswaded, & remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences but wrote.

Then I asked: does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?

He replied, All poets that it does, & in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing.

Then Ezekiel said, The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception: some nations held one principle for the origin & some another; we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all other others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the priests & Philosophers of other countries, and prophecying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius; it was this that our great poet King David desired so fervently & invokes so patheticly, saying by this he conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God, that we cursed in his name all deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the jews.

This said he, like all firm perswasions, is come to pass, for all nations believe the jews code and worship the jews god, and what greater subjection can be? I heard this with some wonder, & must confess my own conviction. After dinner I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works, he said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his.

I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years? he answer'd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian.

I then asked Ezekiel, why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right & left side? he answer'd, the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite; this the North American tribes practise, & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification?

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.




~ --oOo-- ~



I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the rubbish from a caves moth; within, a number of Dragons were hollowing the cave.

In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the cave, and others adorning it with gold, silver and precious stones.

In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of air; he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite; around were numbers of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense cliffs.

In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around & melting the metals into living fluids.

In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals into the expanse.

There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of books & were arranged in libraries.

The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence and now seem to live in it in chains, are in truth, the causes of its life & the sources of all activity; but the chains are, the cunning of weak and tame minds, which have power to resist energy, according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning.

Thus one portion of being, is the Prolific, the other, the Devouring: to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains, but it is not so; he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole.

But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer as a sea recieved the excess of his delights.

Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men. These two classes of men are always upon earth, & they should be enemies; whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence.

Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.

Note. Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to seperate them, as in the Parable of sheep and goats! & he says I came not to send Peace but a Sword.

Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of the Antediluvians who are our Energies.




~ --oOo-- ~



An Angel came to me and said O pitiable foolish young man! O horrible! O dreadful state! consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art going in such career.

I said, perhaps you will be willing to shew me my eternal lot & we will contemplate together upon it and see whether your lot or mine is most desirable.

So he took me thro' a stable & thro' a church & down into the church vault at the end of which was a mill: thro' the mill we went, and came to a cave, down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way till a void boundless as a nether sky appear'd beneath us, & we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity, but I said, if you please we will commit ourselves to this void, and see whether providence is here also, if you will not, I will? but he answer'd, do not presume O young-man but as we here remain behold thy lot which will soon appear when the darkness passes away.

So I remain'd with him sitting in the twisted root of an oak; he was suspended in a fungus, which hung with the head downward into the deep.

By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but shining; round it were fiery tracks on which revolv'd vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather swum in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption, & the air was full of them, & seem'd composed of them; these are Devils, and arc called Powers of the air. I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said, between the black & white spiders.

But now, from between the black & white spiders, a cloud and fire burst and rolled thro' the deep, blackning all beneath, so that the nether deep grew black as a sea & rolled with a terrible noise; beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking east between the clouds & the waves, we saw a cataract of blood mixed with fire, and not many stones throw from us appear'd and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent; at last to the east, distant about three degrees appear'd a fiery crest above the waves; slowly it reared like a ridge of golden rocks till we discover'd two globes of crimson fire, from which the sea fled away in clouds of smoke, and now we saw, it was the head of Leviathan; his forehead was divided into streaks of green & purple like those on a tygers forehead: soon we saw his mouth & red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence.

My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill; I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight hearing a harper who sung to the harp, & his theme was, The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind.

But I arose, and sought for the mill & there I found my Angel, who surprised asked me how I escaped? I answer'd, All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics; for when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper. But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I shew you yours? he laugh'd at my proposal; but I by force suddenly caught him in my arms, & flew westerly thro' the night, till we were elevated above the earths shadow; then I flung myself with him directly into the body of the sun; here I clothed myself in white, & taking in my hand Swedenborgs volumes, sunk from the glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to saturn; here I staid to rest, & then leap'd into the void, between saturn & the fixed stars.

Here, said I! is your lot, in this space, if space it may be call'd. Soon we saw the stable and the church, & I took him to the altar and open'd the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which I descended driving the Angel before me; soon we saw seven houses of brick; one we enter'd; in it were a number of monkeys, baboons, & all of that species, chain'd by the middle, grinning and snatching at one another, but witheld by the shortness of their chains; however I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were caught by the strong, and with a grinning aspect, first coupled with & then devour'd, by plucking off first one limb and then another till the body was left a helpless trunk; this after grinning & kissing it with seeming fondness they devour'd too; and here & there I saw one savourily picking the flesh off of his own tail; as the stench terribly annoy'd us both we went into the mill, & I in my hand brought the skeleton of a body, which in the mill was Aristotles Analytics.

So the Angel said: thy phantasy has imposed upon me & thou oughtest to be ashamed.

I answer'd: we impose on one another, & it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics.

Opposition is true Friendship.

I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning:

Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho' it is only the Contents or Index of already publish'd books.

A man carried a monkey about for a shew, & because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conciev'd himself as much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg; he shews the folly of churches & exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious, & himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net.

Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth:

Now hear another: he has written all the old falshoods.

And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions.

Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all superficial, opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further.

Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborgs, and from those of Dante or Shakespear, an infinite number.

But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.




~ --oOo-- ~



Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire, who arose before an Angel that sat on a cloud, and the Devil utter'd these words.

The worship of God is, Honouring his gifts in other men each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best; those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there is no other God. The Angel hearing this became almost blue, but mastering himself he grew yellow, & at last white pink & smiling, and then replied,

Thou Idolater, is not God One? & is not he visible in Jesus Christ? and has not Jesus Christ given his sanction to the law often commandments, and are not all other men fools, sinners, & nothings?

The Devil answer'd: bray a fool in a morter with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him; if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? murder those who were murder'd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defence before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.

When he had so spoken: I beheld the Angel who stretched out his arms embracing the flame of fire, & he was consumed and arose as Elijah.

Note. This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my particular friend; we often read the Bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they behave well.

I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have whether they will or no.

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression.




~ --oOo-- ~

• An angel deity...

• rational 
• when the angel left hell 
• The nice peaceful world is there.
• You picture hell this way because you see the world through a rational mindset.
• Walks along fires of hell and is delighted with enjoyments of genius
• Blake meets up with an angel.
• The angel tells him that he is preparing himself for a horrible eternity.
• Blake dared the angel to show him.
• Angel symbolically took Blake through the bible.
• He took Blake to the infinite Abyss, with the devils, and told him that is lot was between the black and white spider.
• Leviathan headed for them.
• The angel fled. Blake remained and leviathan disappeared. The bank was pleasant and bathed in moonlight. He heard a Harper.
• Blake left and found the angel who was curious how Blake escaped.
• He told the angel what had happened. 
• The angel laughed. 
• Blake grabbed the angel and took him to his lot. 
• It was beyond Saturn in the void between Saturn and the fixed stars.
• Blake told the angel this was his lot. 
• It was a pit that was hell-like. 
• It was full of baboons and monkeys killing one another. 
• They were cannibals.
• Angel told Blake he should be ashamed.
• Blake told him, “We impose on one another, and it is but lost time to converse with you, whose works are only Analytics.”

• "A Song Of Liberty"

1. The Eternal Female groan'd! it was heard over all the Earth:
2. Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
3. Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers and mutter across the ocean. France rend down thy dungeon;
4. Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
5. Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to eternity down falling,
6. And weep.
7. In her trembling hands she took the new born terror howling;
8. On those infinite mountains of light, now barr'd out by the atlantic sea, the new born fire stood before the starry king!
9. Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages the jealous wings wav'd over the deep.
10. The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield, forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and hurl'd the new born wonder thro' the starry night.
11. The fire, the fire, is falling!
12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance; O Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and wine; O African! black African! (go, winged thought, widen his forehead.)
13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into the western sea.
14. Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled away;
15. Down rush'd beating his wings in vain the jealous king; his grey brow'd councellors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans, among helms, and shields, and chariots, horses, elephants: banners, castles, slings, and rocks,
16. Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's dens;
17. All night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded emerge round the gloomy King.
18. With thunder and fire: leading his starry hosts thro' the waste wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing: his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay,
19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her Golden breast,
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing: the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying,
Empire is no more! and now the lion & wolf shall cease




Chorus


Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted brethren, whom tyrant, he calls free: lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity, that wishes but acts not!

For every thing that lives is Holy.




~ --oOo-- ~

William Wordsworth

• Who had a long poetic decline? 
• Wordsworth
• Lived in the Lake District just off of the border of Scotland, Lake Grasmere
• Death mask made from a cast of his face
• Dove Cottage (his house) had been a medieval inn
• The only likeness of Dorothy is a silhouette
• Lyrical poems: lines written in early spring
• He is trying to jog people out of the rational - remind them of their childhood.
• He is “grieved of what man has made of man.”

• To Wordsworth, nature is the ideal.
• It is unpredictable.
• It can’t be controlled by man God imagined the world.
• In nature you are walking around in God’s mind. 
• Wordsworth always linked nature with the divine.
• Wordsworth was seen as a sell out later in life.
• Nature linked man to the ideal, but we fell in the real.
• The flowers, twigs, and birds are still in nature.
• We stopped being at one with nature

"The Tables Turned"

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

• Answers to expostulations - you are wasting your time dreaming.

"Expostulations and Reply"

"WHY, William, on that old grey stone,
Thus for the length of half a day,
Why, William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?

"Where are your books?--that light bequeathed
To Beings else forlorn and blind!
Up! up! and drink the spirit breathed
From dead men to their kind.
"You look round on your Mother Earth,
As if she for no purpose bore you;
As if you were her first-born birth,
And none had lived before you!"

One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
When life was sweet, I knew not why,
To me my good friend Matthew spake,
And thus I made reply:

"The eye--it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?

"--Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
Conversing as I may,
I sit upon this old grey stone,
And dream my time away,"




1798.

• talking to rational mind 
• You are more wise if you learn from nature instead of watching to se how things work.
• We take apart things to see how they work.
• You can read about life; but until we experience life, we don’t know what it is like.

“Ode: Intimations of Immortality” 

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair; 15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound 20
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea 30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 35
Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival, 40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning, 45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— 50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet 55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended; 75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind, 80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came. 85

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes! 90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral; 95
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long 100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity; 110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest! 115
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, 120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie; 125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live, 135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise; 145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized, 150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may, 155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, 170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound! 175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright 180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind; 185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death, 190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight 195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet; 200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

• What role does nature play in human life? 
• It is life! 
• Nature is God! 
• It is something to worship. 
• His role in society? 
• Man speaking to man 
• regular guy just with more insight 
• Poet is prophet that holds the world together.
• Imaginations & memories? 
• Memories of imaginative childhood is a spiritual release for adults.
• Memories are also called a storehouse of memories.
• Imagination and memories are a way to get a glimpse of the ideal.
• Ideal has something to do with the perfect balance between the emotional and the rational 
• like the force in star wars 
• The Jedi are in the ideal.
• harmony and joy of living 
• harmony of all living things and joy of living with it 
• Blake said we all fell down a long time ago and when you are born, you are born in the real. 
• Wordsworth says we are part of the ideal before we are born and gradually fall into the real, and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to get back 
• why do we fall? 
• And how do we get back? 
• All romantics try to answer these two questions.
• “there was a time” when he was a kid he was in the ideal, but he is no longer there  
• i.e. – Christmas  
• Once you stop believing in Santa Claus the magic is gone.
• stanza 2  
• Nature hasn’t changed, but his perceptions of nature has changed.
• stanza 3 
• Now he’s sad.
• stanza 4 
• talking to kids 
• line 51 
• But, something is missing something’s been lost. 
• stanza 5 
• This is the what happened stanza. 
• The boy is attuned with the ideal.
• stanza 6 
• Why does it happen?
• There’s good stuff in the earth that distract us.
• Earth distracts us.
• Earth is in the real.
• stanza 7 
• example  
• Kids imagine being grown up.
• He is playing grown up, 
• stanza 8 
• Kid is still innocent, still close to the ideal.
• Why are you trying so hard to get to the real? 
• You are going to get to the real soon enough.
• stanza 9 
• Wordsworth says we can’t get back to the ideal.
• There are things we can do to be happy.
• Storehouse of memory
• stanza 10 
• So what if we can’t get back?
• but we won’t grieve 
• stanza 11 
• I still love nature.
• The smallest things can trigger a memory.
• Nature is one way to get us closer to the ideal.
• Nothing is ugly in Wordsworth’s poetry 
• Everything is sweet.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• He and Wordsworth were best friends.
• He was not raised in the country, he was raised in London.
• City upbringing is why he cannot connect with the ideal.
• Idealistic 
• in college 
• He wants to set up a utopia in Pennsylvania.
• Pantisocracy - "utopian scheme devised in 1794 by the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey for an egalitarian community"
• He engaged Sara Fricker and plan fell apart. 
• He could not get out of the engagement so he married out of obligation, not love.
• Coleridge fell in love with Sarah Hutchison.
• Sonnets 
• All romantics are writing sonnets and had been out of style for over 200 years.
• They did this because they wanted to get back to the mystical.
• They are all about love.
• Emotional
• They revive the sonnet as an art form.
• He had a drug addiction.
• opium
• doctor written prescriptions
• laudanum
• which is opium with vodka
• mixing drugs and alcohol - (Anyone would dream a freaky dream on that.)
• Buried in poets’ corner in Westminster Abbey
• More of a priest-like visionary
• He is prophetic, but not god-like.
• Sees God as a way to the ideal
• How much power and control do people have? 
• We have no control.
• Coleridge is the if only poet.
• Nature was like a god to Wordsworth it was more of a symbol to Coleridge.

• "The Eolian Harp"

composed at clevedon, somersetshire

My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our Cot, our Cot o’ergrown
With white-flowered Jasmin, and the broad-leaved Myrtle,
(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!)
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,
Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve
Serenely brilliant (such would Wisdom be)
Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents
Snatched from yon bean-field! and the world so hushed!
The stilly murmur of the distant Sea
Tells us of silence.

And that simplest Lute,
Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark!
How by the desultory breeze caressed,
Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!
O! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere—
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so filled;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

And thus, my Love! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eyelids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquility:
Full many a thought uncalled and undetained,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject Lute!

And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, O beloved Woman! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallowed dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
Meek Daughter in the family of Christ!
Well hast thou said and holily dispraised
These shapings of the unregenerate mind;
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain Philosophy’s aye-babbling spring.
For never guiltless may I speak of him,
The Incomprehensible! save when with awe
I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;
Who with his saving mercies healèd me,
A sinful and most miserable man,
Wildered and dark, and gave me to possess
Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honored Maid!

• written to Sara Fricker
• He gets up there for a glimpse, but something always happens to knock him back down. 
• An eolian harp is a box shaped instrument that you prop in the window that the wind blows through playing spontaneous music. 
• Romantics love it because it is spontaneous. 
• The wind does not play rational music.

• Stanza 1 
• He is in the real. 
• He is sitting in nature.
• Real imagery
• Stanza 2  
• Now we are in the supernatural imagery.
• He is trying to get out of the real into some ideal.
• Line 39
• He has become the eolian harp.
• He is in tune with the ideal.
• He is in tune with nature.
• Stanza 4 
• Everything is in tune with everything else.
• For a second, he sees we are all eolian harps. 
• The god of all is the ideal.
• Stanza 5
• His wife brings him down.
• You should walk humbly with God.
• He says, 'yes dear,' and ends up back where he started from.

• "Kubla Kahn"

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play'd,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me,
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

• from reading about the king
• Coleridge fell asleep and dreamed the poem.

• Kubla Kahn
• 2 settings connected by a river

• Romantic  
• If the word is there it has significance.
• Caverns are the ideal.
• Pleasure dome is the real.
• It is pleasant but not perfect.
• Demon-lover
• supernatural significance
• ejaculation metaphor (lines 19-22) 
• builds then crashes 
• Kubla damsel builds then crashes at the end.
• He puts the pleasure dome in the ideal.
• He switches the pleasure dome to stir people up because it is unpredictable.

• End 
• He is the poet prophet.
• He is frightening like in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
• You cannot leave the real.
• Like the drug addict’s big brother telling the little brother, “Don’t be like me. I am miserable."

The Victorian Period and Religion

Important Dates:

1830: 7 years before Victoria cam to the throne. Why? The Industrial Revolution and the expansion that it caused

1832: First Reform Bill

1837: Victoria becomes queen (18 years old)

1846: Corn Laws repealed

1850: Tennyson succeeds Wordsworth as Poet Laureate

1851: Great Exhibition, London

1859: Darwin’s Origin of the Species

1870-71: Franco-Prussian War

1901: Victoria dies (longest lived monarch)

Expansion and Industrialization:

• Industrialization of England – England got the industrial revolution first in Europe because of the French Revolution and shipping to get the products back and forth across oceans. They were growing so fast, it caused all kinds of problems. The infrastructure, child labor, and crime were just three of the problems.
• Status of London – London became the center of European power more than ¼ of the world was controlled by the British Empire (the Victorian Empire).
• Economic advance – Victorian Empire acquired enormous wealth
• Territorial Expansionism

In Victoria’s lifetime:

• London grows from 2 million to 6.5 million
• Fast trains and ships; mechanized looms, mechanized printing presses; combines; telegraph; intercontinental cable; photography; anesthetics; universal education; vacuum cleaner – great time of invention and change

Effects on the Victorian mindset: sense of excitement, sense of loss (the “Victorian Paradox” – we are on top of the world coupled with the sense of loss)

• Ethnocentrism – we’re on top of the world and nobody can mess with us – writer’s acted against this
• Exciting, but felt loss of traditional rhythms and patterns of loss – (along with grief) strain of sadness and melancholy that things will never the same again romantic longing for the past this caused disorientation
• Emphasis on practicality and industry creates a sense of dullness and boredom – particularly regarding faith, Darwin, and the discovery of dinosaur bones – gave a sense of nothing to believe in - all about money – empty and soulless

Early Victorian Period (1830-48): “Time of Troubles”

Period of loud cries for reform – Carlyle, Disraeli, Tennyson, all decried violence, anger, and social injustice

1830: 1st railway open to the public – (beginning of the Victorian Period) expansion – easy transportation, people could move to cities, made the workforce grown – pretty ugly, nasty times – Dickens had an ugly view of London because of this – crime rates, sewage, smog, slums, misery, child labor, before universal education, only few prospered, no safety regulations – you had to own land to vote

1832: Reform Bill – you owned material property or land you could vote – you only needed 10 pounds of property to vote

• “Growing Pains”: problems associated with growth near revolution
• “The Hungry 40’s”: famine and potato blight – Potato famine – Irish poor – most moved to the U.S.

Disaster / revolution averted: 1846: Corn Laws abolished – Corn Laws: putting tariff on imported grains, poor people in London started starving because they lived off of potato flour

Mid-Victorian Period (1848-70): “Age of Improvement”

1. Economic Prosperity
• Solid comfortableness, contentment, pride in England, strong moral values
• Confidence in ability to fix problems: optimism, complacency
o Effects of free trade
o Effects of Factory Acts – regulating factories’ safety – hours worked – child labor
• Great pride in technical progress: Great Exhibition of 1851 – Queen Victoria and husband throws invention exhibition in their symbol of pride, The Crystal Palace
2. Growing Religious controversy: Utilitarianism vs. Philosophical Conservation
• Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham – boring writing – practical is the way to go: wants to ban religion – everything should be put to the test of reason: does something enhance the happiness of the highest number of people, if not, then ban it
• Philosophical conservationism: Coleridge
Two types of philosophical conservatives:
• Wants to get rid of traditional religion but retain belief (Carlyle) – Coleridge
• Wants to strengthen traditional religion (Tractarianism) – Victorians are going to hell in a hand basket – responsible for strict, moral, prudish behavior (especially sexuality)
3. Science Intensifies the Religious Debates:
• 1859: Darwin’s (devout Catholic)  Origin of the Species (sense of isolation from God and other people)
• “Higher criticism” – intellectual movement began in Germany – they said let’s study the Bible as if it were any text and not be biased by the fact that it was a religious document
• Geology / astronomy – estimates of the age of the earth / discovery of dinosaur bones

Summary: mid-Victorian period is a time of great prosperity, but everything people have always known (social systems, government systems, economic systems, religious systems) are being challenged. Serious religious and philosophical problems result. Extreme religious reactionary prudishness

The Late Victorian Period (1870-1901): Decay of Victorian Values

Glow of contentment continues, but cracks begin to show: England’s still #1
• “The Irish Question:  – problems with Ireland (Oscar Wilde)
• Bismarck’s Germany – dominance in the ocean is threatened
• America’s recovery from Civil War
• 1873-4: major economic depression: mass immigrations from Britain
• Growth of labor as political / economic force – trade unions established, brings salaries up and profits down
Result: increasing cynicism, criticism of traditional mid-Victorian values – mid-Victorians were a bunch of idiots – Oscar Wilde
1890’s: Bridge between Victorian and Modern periods
1. “The Gay 90’s”: Prince Edward’s influence
2. Fin du siecle melancholy, despair, endless seeking for new pleasures: “The Aesthetic Movement”

Characteristics of Victorianism

1. Earnestness or “eagerness;” “seriousness of purpose;” respectability – have a lot taken away from them
Lady of Shalott – Tennyson
The Harlot’s House – Oscar Wilde
• role of writer to reform to make society better both physically and morally
Cry of the Children – Elizabeth Browning – child labor
Porphyria’s Lover – Robert Browning – the treatment of women
Lady of Shalott – Tennyson – the treatment of women
• want to actually achieve, not just strive (a practical age) – because there is a lot of stuff to clean up because of the early industrial revolution
• Great concern with moral issues (role of women, religion, etc.)
• evangelical movement: strict morality / purity issues
TIES TO:
2. reactive against the romantics – romantics were mopers and dreamers, they admired the beauty because it lead to nowhere
Sonnets from the Portuguese #43 – Elizabeth Browning – I love you level headedly
Lady of Shalott – Tennyson
Ulysses – Tennyson – how noble is the romantic quest
Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold – nature cannot save us
Harlot’s House – Oscar Wilde
• strongly influenced by Romantics, but see the romantics as a doomed quest
• move gradually away from excesses of Romantics; stricter, more disciplined poetry (forms)
• saw Romantics as mopers and dreamers; wanted to be productive
3. ethnocentric / patriotic / and reactions against it
Mother and Poet – Elizabeth Browning – against Britain’s politics
• result of political / military / industrial advances
4. Poetic experimentation in forms (use of the word I to third person in creating a persona) / themes / settings (foreign settings), etc. (glorification of myth, legends, etc.) TIES TO #7 (critique of how dull things are)
• boredom with “practical age”
• reaction against strictness of moral codes
• attempt to “wake people up” from complacency
Sonnets from the Portuguese #43 – Elizabeth Browning – reviving sonnets
Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood – Christina Rossetti
The Lady of Shalott – Tennyson
Robert Browning – Porphyria’s Lover, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister – (the idea of the unreliable narrator and dramatic monologue: all new techniques, settings)
5. religious / moral questioning / doubts – strain on religious belief
• desire for stability in a fast-changing world
• new scientific discoveries challenge old beliefs
Sonnets from the Portuguese #43 – Elizabeth Browning – questioning faith
Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold -
Goblin Market – Christina Rossetti
God’s Grandeur – Gerard Manley – don’t question faith
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister – Robert Browning – even the most faithful are sinful
6. focus on practical / social issues (see #1 & #2)
Cry of the Children – Elizabeth Browning – child labor
Mother and Poet – Elizabeth Browning – the treatment of women
Robert Browning – Porphyria’s Lover (the treatment of women) & Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister (even those with power are not perfect; greed)
Goblin Market – Christina Rossetti – we live in a society that has everything, but we want more; greed –– Dead before Death – everybody was dead before they have a chance to live
Harlot’s House – Oscar Wilde – everybody was dead souls
7. Sense of loss, decay, collapse, dullness, etc.
• loss of “magic” of Romantic period
• result of extremely practical, task-oriented society
Pre-Raphaelites – Christina Rossetti – Goblin Market – the more people have, the more they want
The Lady of Shalott – Tennyson – treatment of women
Porphyria’s Lover – Robert Browning – way women are treated
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister – Robert Browning – religious instability
Goblin Market – Christina Rossetti – contrasted the sense of loss, decay, collapse, dullness – this poem was all about richness and greed
Dead before Death and Cobwebs – Christina Rossetti – reflected this by talking about how everyone was dead inside
8. “Victorian Paradox”: desire for new coupled with fear of change
Pre-Raphaelites – Dead before Death – Christina Rossetti – we are all dead inside
Harlot’s House – Oscar Wilde – we are all like puppets all controlled with the same mind; we are all dead souls
Cry of the Children – Elizabeth Browning – reform for child labor
The Lady of Shalott – Tennyson – the treatment of women
9. theme of humanity’s dominance over / destruction of nature
• loss of Romantic vision of nature – God – nature is no longer God – disconnect from nature
• result of intensive industrialization
Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold – nature has nothing to offer
God’s Grandeur – Gerard Manley – man cannot destroy nature because of God. He keeps it full of life
Harlot’s House – Oscar Wilde – last stanza (nature creeps in like a little girl; nature is afraid of the acts of men
10. theme of human isolation / desire for intimacy – turn to relationships to fix the dilemma (a lot of love and relationship poetry)
• result of massive societal / cultural changes and physical relocations people are really disoriented intimidating and frightening (Victorian Paradox)
• result of religious / social / philosophical loss of certainty
Sonnets from the Portuguese #43 – Elizabeth Browning – need to be with a man; need for love an intimacy
The Buried Life – Matthew Arnold – “Alas! Is even love to weak / To unlock the heart, and let it speak? / Are even lovers powerless to reveal / To one another what indeed they feel?” (Society rules how even lovers can speak to one another. I don’t want to play by society’s rules.)
Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold – “The Sea of Faith / Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore / Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. / But now I only hear / Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, / Retreating, to the breath / Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear / And naked shingles of the world.” (Many have lost their faith)

October 13, 2006

One of the themes of Victorian authors is taking shots at the Romantic authors
The three chunks of the Victorian Period are
1830-48 – early
1848-70 – mid
1870-1901 – late
England was the top empire

This is the time of the industrial revolution

Sense of massive change that people cannot keep up with

In Victoria’s Empire
London grows 4.5 million more people
Quality of life is pretty grim
Health problems – sewage
Education problems – make them work
Housing – slums
The Victorian Paradox
Coal dust was so thick that it fell like snow and piled up
Part of the reason that all of this was happening
People had to own land to vote – when they moved out of the rural areas to the cities, they gave up their land to move









100 people = 4 seats in Parliament so there were still 4 seats for 25 people

Mid-Victorian period – wealth & excess

Ironically – bizarre paradox – very sexually oppressed, but pornography and prostitution was very popular – prudish and uptight even at home

Extreme polarization between the liberal and conservative

Bentham – Utilitarianism – if something enhances the happiness of the highest number of people then do it
Willed his body to science
Publicly dissected
Was stuffed and still attends meetings at college he worked at
Coleridge – tell into 1st camp – wanted to get rid of traditional religion, but retain belief

October 18, 2006

Elizabeth Browning
“Cry of the Children” – she is saying listen to me about what is going on – let’s get some reforms in the factory – line 51 – “It is good…” it is better for the children to die because they haven’t been given the chance to live
90% of women writers had to use a pseudonym (could not publish under their own name)
Bronte sisters – under men’s names – Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights…etc. – women had few rights than 1000 years earlier – it was legal fro a man to beat his wife as long as the stick he beat her with was only as big around as his thumb (the rule of thumb) – Rossetti was able to publish under her own name because her brothers owned the literary magazine called the germ and they published her
Reason browning was able to publish under her own name is because she was 13 when she had her first poem published – she was a child prodigy – people were comfortable with her

“Sonnets from the Portuguese” are love letters to Robert browning / she lied to her father and told him that she was translating the Portuguese sonnets – hence the name

“Mother & Poet” – the woman has 2 jobs – she is a mother and a poet – she does as a woman is supposed to but she still lost both of her sons, because of that, she lost her ability to be a poetess. She will not write a song for patriotism

October 23, 2006

Tennyson – Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood wanted to bring back the exuberance and mysticism back to literature and art:

“The Lady of Shalott” fits into the Victorian women theme. She sees the world out her window (through the mirror) Sir Lancelaot comes by and she is sick of her life in the tower. She looked upon the “forbidden fruit.” She goes down and gets in the boat and she dies. (Dante Gabriel Rossetti made engraving of Lady of Shalott)
What does it mean? The women in the Victorian period are “trapped in a gilded cage.” She is trapped in her cage only to weave. Her enslavement in Victorian society. Mother and Poet keeps the rules and gets slammed; the lady of Shalott breaks the rules and gets slammed. She is memorialized by Lancelot and says she’s pretty, so God take pity on her soul.
OR
A parable against the Romantics – the deadliness of the infinite striving – 1st stanza the focus is on the real – once she made a quest for the ideal, it killed her. If you strive for the ideal it will kill you
“Ulysses” – man with mid-life crisis, he has been gone for 20 years. He gets back and after three years wants to leave once again – line 53 – we can still strive with Gods. His old goal was to get back to Ithaca. His new goal is to sail as far as he can until he dies. He wants to sail beyond the stars. Reaching the ideal would make you bored and miserable. He is happy until he gets to the goal and when he gets there he is bored. He wants to dump all on his child. How noble is the romantic quest? It is great for the romantic, but destroys the family of the romantic.

October 25, 2006

Robert Browning is buried in poet’s corner in Westminster’s Abbey next to Tennyson – These poems come from a collection called life in the asylum – the unreliable narrator. He creates a narrator in his poems that is not himself and in fact the opposite of himself. – Dramatic monologue is usually in plays. He started out as a play write so he took the dramatic monologue out of the theater and put it in his poems – Critiquing the most powerful society by shocking them and doing so from a distance. Trying to shock to create social change
“Porphyria’s Lover” starts out like romantic poetry with nature. He is misleading the reader – female expectations – submissive, sexual, eager to please, not irritated, trusting, beautiful – the first muscle he moves in this poem is to strangle her. Just from the list, she looks pretty good for Victorian times. He knows she loves him so he kills her to make the moment last forever. He nervously opens her eyes because he is afraid that loving gaze is gone. Neither character is active while the other is because in Victorian era women and men cannot be equal in society and Victorian society strangles the life out of women and props them up as trophies
Grotesque Diction
“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” 2 monks – religious icon is cursing hating – brother Lawrence is boring and only talks about crops – one track mind – stanza 4 – brother Lawrence is lusting, but he does not let it show – stanza 5 – accusing him of gluttony and does not make a cross with silverware when he is done – Lawrence is not a good Christian – stanza 8 – he is going to slip porn into brother Lawrence’s basket

October 27, 2006

Matthew Arnold lived in his father’s shadow
“The Buried Life” – massive limestone cliffs; has always been a tourist spot; even British people tend to go for the natural beauty of it – he is talking to a person and not to nature – buried life is our true selves that we cannot show to anybody – 1st stanza – they are having a light conversation; talking on a surfacey level; joking around rather than being intimate. He is sad because of this, just hush and let me look into your soul – stanza 2 – he tries to have a deep conversation, but it did not work. We are afraid if we show our true selves we will be rejected – stanza 3 – do we have to be that way? We are lucky if we can do that for just one moment – stanza 4 – fate because it knew we would crew it up if we showed our true selves bade us to hide our true selves – stanza 5 – it is there and we want to know. People want to really explore themselves and find out who we really are, but we cannot dig deep enough to find our true selves because we do not know how. How do you let down our masks? We get frustrated because we get tire of this inward striving. So we go through the daily tasks so we don’t think about the deeper level, but every now and again the deeper levels seep out and depress us – stanza 7 – is there a cure for human isolation? Yes! How do we fix this? There is one way, desire for intimacy, one on one intimate companionship. That is the only way we can find the cure for this connecting on a deep level is the only way we can get there.

“Dover Beach” – stanza 1 – writing this on his honeymoon. He is standing at the window and looking out at the beautiful cliffs of Dover (closest point to France). He calls his wife over. He can see France. It is gorgeous, but he is sad – stanza 2 – he heard the same sadness brought on by the ocean. Sophocles (the ebb and flow of human misery). – Stanza 3 – sea of faith (religion). The religious controversy because we don’t know what to believe at all – stanza 4 – the solution is to be true to one another.

October 30, 2006

Christina Rossetti
“Goblin Market” fruit. If you see fruit it is probably Goblin Market. What does it mean? Fruit is addictive. The more you eat, the more you want. Sin and sensual desires, and temptation are like fruit, forbidden fruit. Possible sexual temptation, impure thoughts, fixated on sex. Rossetti is saying there are more things in life than sex, possibly greed, bounty, excess that comes along with wealth. We have all this money and all this power, but we want more and more. Anything that we covet instead of God. Not a time of moderation ( Victorian Period), but a time of excess and we are letting our priorities get out of whack. Rich, lush imagery, but sonnets are cold flat and bare. We have all this stuff but we are not yet satisfied.

“Dead before Death,” and “Cobwebs” – much knowing, little wise. We know a lot, but we don’t know the most important things. We are all dead inside. We are corpses, Zombies

Oscar Wilde was eccentric, good looking. He even has an art deco type of tomb. He too thought we were corpses. The only great Victoria that we will read. Thins are changing. Witty and clever. Spent his career making fun of the mid-Victorian period.
“Harlot’s House” – harlot sales something valuable for worldly goods. Skeleton’s dancing – dead souls – marionettes – puppets with the same mind. Temptation. Nature is afraid – no power in nature that we can control. Nature is not our salvation.

November 1, 2006

Gerard M. Hopkins – A lot of his poetry was written about places and things around Oxford. He is fascinated with nature. Hopkins’ poetry was not published until 1918 (28 years after his death). His poetry was willed to Robert Bridges. His philosophy was from an admired medieval writer named Duns Scotus (where we get the word dunce). Hopkins liked his idea of inscape (which is like landscape)  every created thing has selfness. The most inscaped of all creation is humans because we can imagine ourselves with the inscape of something else. This process is called instress. It is to feel the selfness of another created thing. This is the highest form of worship to God. There is no iambic rhythm to his poetry. He gets away from rhythm. Worshipping by instressing to nature. The hurl and gliding – Why? Short circuiting the brain, he messes with the synoptic. He makes you feel it. Groans of emotion.
In the “Windhover” diving is more spectacular because it is more dangerous. Christ died on the cross. Hovering bird makes a cross shape. Coming down off of the cross and he’s being raised.  Becomes dangerous to no believers – stanza 3 – just walking makes the earth shine. Dirt and fire if injured if cut become more beautiful worship to experience of Christ.

1 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

Rural to urban societal shift

Social upheaval, loss of traditional life patterns

Reformist writings: E. Browning – “Cry of the Children;” R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister;” Tennyson – “The Lady of Shalott;” Arnold – “The Buried Life”

2 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

Rural to urban societal shift

Social upheaval, loss of traditional life patterns

Desire to find security (in human relations, honor, duty): Hopkins – (turning to God in a new way) “Windhover;” E. Browning – “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” “Mother and Poet;” R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover;” Tennyson – “Ulysses,” “The Lady of Shalott”

Rigid social / moral rules

Tractarians: strictness – didn’t read anything by them, but read plenty against them

Reaction against rigid morality: R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover”

3 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

Rural to urban societal shift

Social upheaval, loss of traditional life patterns

Desire to find security by clinging to old beliefs

Rigid social / moral rules

Tractarians: strictness – didn’t read anything by them, but read plenty against them

Reaction against rigid morality: R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover”

4 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

New scientific discoveries (Darwin, geology, astronomy, etc.)

Intellectual upheaval, challenge to traditional beliefs
REACTIVE
Desire to find security by clinging to old beliefs

Rigid social / moral rules

Tractarians: strictness – didn’t read anything by them, but read plenty against them

Reaction against rigid morality: R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover”

5 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

New scientific discoveries (Darwin, geology, astronomy, etc.)

Intellectual upheaval, challenge to traditional beliefs

Desire to throw out old beliefs and re-examine them: Arnold – “Dover Beach”; Hopkins – “God’s Grandeur,” “The Windhover” (look at god in a new way – inscape, instress)

6 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

New scientific discoveries (Darwin, geology, astronomy, etc.)

Intellectual upheaval, challenge to traditional beliefs

Grief loss of faith: Arnold – “Dover Beach;” E. Browning – “Sonnets from the Portuguese” (lost saints); Rossetti – Cobwebs (loveless sea – sea of faith)

7 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

New scientific discoveries (Darwin, geology, astronomy, etc.)

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Moral complacency

“pro-England” writings: Kippling; Tennyson – “Lady of Shalott;” “Charge of the Light Brigade”; AGAINST: Browning – “Mother and Poet”

8 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

New scientific discoveries (Darwin, geology, astronomy, etc.)

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Moral complacency

Reformist writings: E. Browning – “Cry of the Children” (can-do practical spirit); R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister;” Tennyson – “The Lady of Shalott;” Arnold – “The Buried Life”

9 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

New scientific discoveries (Darwin, geology, astronomy, etc.)

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

“pro-England” writings: Kippling; Tennyson – “Lady of Shalott;” “Charge of the Light Brigade”; AGAINST: Browning – “Mother and Poet”

10 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

New scientific discoveries (Darwin, geology, astronomy, etc.)

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Faith in ability to create positive change

Reformist writings: E. Browning – “Cry of the Children” (can-do practical spirit); R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister;” Tennyson – “The Lady of Shalott;” Arnold – “The Buried Life”

11 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

New scientific discoveries (Darwin, geology, astronomy, etc.)

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Faith in ability to create positive change

Emphasis on reason vs. imagination

Utilitarianism (Bentham)

Sense of dullness, loss of magic

Writings to reflect dullness: Rossetti – “Dead Before Death;” Wilde – “Harlot’s House;” Arnold – “The Buried Life”

12 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

New scientific discoveries (Darwin, geology, astronomy, etc.)

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Faith in ability to create positive change

Emphasis on reason vs. imagination

Utilitarianism (Bentham)

Sense of dullness, loss of magic

Writings to contrast dullness (grotesque diction, sprung rhythm, exotic settings, etc.): Rossetti – “Goblin Market;” Hopkins – “God’s Grandeur,” “The Windhover;” R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover;” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”

13 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

Expansionism / Colonialism

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Moral complacency

“pro-England” writings: Kippling; Tennyson – “Lady of Shalott;” “Charge of the Light Brigade”; AGAINST: Browning – “Mother and Poet”

14 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

Expansionism / Colonialism

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Moral complacency

Reformist writings: E. Browning – “Cry of the Children” (can-do practical spirit); R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister;” Tennyson – “The Lady of Shalott;” Arnold – “The Buried Life”

15 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

Expansionism / Colonialism

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

“pro-England” writings: Kippling; Tennyson – “Lady of Shalott;” “Charge of the Light Brigade”; AGAINST: Browning – “Mother and Poet”

16 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

Expansionism / Colonialism

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Faith in ability to create positive change

Reformist writings: E. Browning – “Cry of the Children” (can-do practical spirit); R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister;” Tennyson – “The Lady of Shalott;” Arnold – “The Buried Life”

17 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

Expansionism / Colonialism

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Faith in ability to create positive change

Emphasis on reason vs. imagination

Utilitarianism (Bentham)

Sense of dullness, loss of magic

Writings to reflect dullness: Rossetti – “Dead Before Death;” Wilde – “Harlot’s House;” Arnold – “The Buried Life”

18 Industrial Revolution Hits England First
GIVES
New inventions/technologies give England an economic advantage of going first

Expansionism / Colonialism

Wealth, excitement, “can-do” attitude, ethnocentrism, practicality: we can get things done

Faith in ability to create positive change

Emphasis on reason vs. imagination

Utilitarianism (Bentham)

Sense of dullness, loss of magic

Writings to contrast dullness (grotesque diction, sprung rhythm, exotic settings, etc.): Rossetti – “Goblin Market;” Hopkins – “God’s Grandeur,” “The Windhover;” R. Browning – “Porphyria’s Lover;” “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”

Lowry's Giver and Orwell's 1984: Significant Parallels

A great deal of controversy surrounds Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver. The controversy varies depending on the topic. Ironically many people believe the novel should be censored. “The irony of censorship attacks on the novel is that The Giver dramatizes the plight of an individual living in a society that censors its peoples’ language, emotions, and behaviors” (Lord). First, parents throughout the country believe the book should be banned from schools due to adult themes. Next, many feel the book has too many similarities to other books about dystopian societies. Finally, because Lowry chose to leave the ending up to the reader, people tend to overlook the positive message that can be taken from such a book. Whether it be due adult themes, similarities to dystopian societies, and the ambiguous ending, we must decide for ourselves whether The Giver should be removed from school shelves.

Though it is true there are adult themes throughout the book such as infanticide, euthanasia, the broken down family unit, and censorship; the book can be used as a tool to teach young adults about the world around them. Lowry wrote the novel specifically for young adults. However, it is argued the language and visualizations Lowry chose to use is horrifying and disturbing to young adults. However, as a society, we must not forget that many of our fairy tales were originally just as horrifying and disturbing in order to teach valuable lessons to young adults. For instance in Hansel and Gretel, the youngsters did not conquer the witch and return to their grief stricken father. In fact the story was written to warn children not to wander off in the woods, for they did not know what could be awaiting them. It could have been a hungry witch as in Hansel and Gretel, a starving wolf dressed up as your grandmother as in Little Red Riding Hood, or even a rapist waiting for a fair maiden to fall asleep for him to ravish as in Sleeping Beauty. Just as these stories provided valuable lessons to the youth of centuries past, The Giver provides a valuable lesson to the young adults of today.

In today’s society people scream for more and more governmental control of what our young adults are exposed to. Lowry’s novel has gone under much scrutiny because parents are afraid of the adult themes. Depending on a person’s viewpoint, infanticide is not present in the United States (some may argue abortion is infanticide); neither is euthanasia. However, because infanticide and euthanasia is still practiced in other cultures throughout the world, it is important that young adults construct their own viewpoints of the brutal practice. To Jonas and the others in his community, infants were released into “Elsewhere.” Unless the person’s job was to release an individual, they were left oblivious to the true meaning of “release.” When Jonas’ father releases the smaller twin, he lacks the apprehension most readers would expect if told to kill a newborn child. This scene is one of the most scrutinized scenes in the novel. “Would-be censors object to the scene because it is so graphic, and because it transforms Jonas’s once beloved father into a cold-blooded murderer” (Lord). However, without scenes like these, young adults would be left to wonder why emotions are so important to an individual. If the emotions are stripped away from society in such a manner, there could be another excepted massive holocaust as seen in Nazi Germany.

Furthermore, the breakdown of the family unit is one other criticized theme in the novel. The government chooses the family units, relationships are never consummated, and the children are assigned to certain parents. Jonas’ world is void of grandparents as well. Because the parents are removed from their children, as they become adults, they are not allowed contact with their grandchildren. Family values and memories are not passed down through the generations as they are done today. This leads to the lack of individuality that Jonas’ society is all about, or as they call it “sameness.” Jonas the Receiver and the Giver are the only people in the community that hold on to the memories that give wisdom. Because everything is nearly perfected in organization, people are left with no control of their own destinies. They have no choices to make because committees have made all of those choices for them. Too much governmental power is what the constitution has been written to prevent. People must learn at a young age they have choices to make throughout their own lives. Every choice that the child makes affects his or her future. The best way to teach a child how important it is to have the right to make choices on their own is to give them examples of societies where one’s destiny is not in their own hands. A society where individuals have lost control, which may be painted as utopian societies; however, they are, in fact, dystopian societies in which control is left to a Totalitarian regime.

The similarities between Jonas’ community and the dystopian communities in other novels is also reason for controversy surrounding The Giver. Lowry’s novel can be viewed as George Orwell’s 1984 for young adults, because of the many similarities between the two books. Patty Campbell states, “At first it seems to be an autocratic state – an impression that is given credence by Orwellian images such as the rasping voices that chastise from ubiquitous speakers.” This is very similar to the chastisement Winston Smith receives during the lack of his full attention to his physical jerks. However, the main differences between the two societies is the loudspeakers in The Giver do not single individuals out; whereas the voice from the telescreen screamed, “Smith!...6079 Smith W! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please!” (36). Another similarity is the Receiver possesses memories that society wanted to forget, and Winston possesses memories the Party wants rewritten and forgotten. Furthermore, rule breakers are released in The Giver. However, rule breakers in 1984 are not allowed death, but they are forced to release their identities, thoughts, and ideas. Then they are forced into conformity or “sameness.”

Additionally, the two novels have the biblical allusion of life, death, and resurrection. Jonas is the different from everyone else during his life, but does not call attention to his gift to see beyond. Like everyone else, he takes a pill to suppress his stirrings; Jonas lives in his community of people just as everyone else does. When Jonas first becomes the receiver, he looses the identity, which was forced upon him. Jonas loses his innocence and becomes aware of the society around him. This is the death of his sameness; and Jonas is resurrected as an individual who makes his own memories, and is the salvation of his community. Likewise, Winston’s life death and resurrection story is similar as Jonas’s, but at the same time, it is completely opposite. Winston begins as a freethinker with ideas that could save his community. Like Jesus, his ideas and lifestyle is dangerous to the totalitarian regime that controls the populous. Therefore, he is spiritually executed and forced to conform to the masses. In the end Winston is resurrected as the shell of the man he once was. He is left with no emotion and a sense of helplessness. The reader does learn, however, the citizens in The Giver did chose their way of life; but because the memories and histories are kept from them, the reader is left to wander if they made the choice willingly or if the choice was forced upon them as in Winston’s case. After all, Jonas himself wonders how much he has been told is the truth, or how much of it may be the lies individuals are allowed to tell. It is confusing why people fear novels, which warn against the horrors and atrocities one may face in a dystopian society. Perhaps it is due to the violent themes these societies suggest. However, there are only two ways people can learn about the horrors and atrocities of dystopian societies. They either learn from first hand experience, or they learn from reading. In order to prevent such atrocities from happening in the future, it is crucial that young adults learn about them when they are young.

Another source of controversy is the ambiguous ending Lowry has given to her story. “Lowry refuses to provide a tidy ending” (Campbell). This leaves the readers to draw their own conclusions about the ending. Either readers feel Jonas and Gabriel died, or readers are more optimistic and believe that Jonas and Gabriel found their happy ending. They were accepted into a family like the memory of the Christmas gathering. The vague ending has caused people to believe young adults will be distraught if they feel the young adults have passed away. Because there are many Biblical allusions throughout the novel, it can be assumed if Jonas and Gabriel died, they entered the Kingdom of Heaven.

As mentioned before, Jonas is the savior of his community. He is given a gift to see beyond, which no one else has. Also, Gabriel’s name leads readers with a Christian background to believe the infant is a messenger sent to deliver revelations to Jonas. Without Gabriel’s attachment to Jonas, the meaning of release may not have been fully revealed to Jonas. Gabriel’s impending release announced the resurrection of Jonas as the savior of his community. Finally, the name Jonas is a variation of Jonah, who was called by God to “Go to the great city Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (Jonah 1:2). Like Jonah, Jonas is scornful of the wickedness in his community. Because preaching against their ways would mean release for Jonas, the only way he can help them is to leave them with their memories so they can become whole again, so they can feel again. The Biblical undertones to The Giver supports the idea this novel is appropriate for young adults. One way people can strengthen faith in other people is to challenge that faith. This book can be used as a tool to strengthen Christian faith in young adults.

So, is The Giver an appropriate novel for schools? It seems many values and morals can be taught from reading the book. The book is written in a manner that leaves questions open in the reader’s mind; thus, it teaches them to think for themselves. Furthermore, Lowry’s novel is appropriate to teach young adults how important the choices they make for themselves are toward their own future. Unlike George Orwell’s 1984, the novel is appropriate for the younger adults, because they, too, need to learn the world is not as picture perfect as they may believe. This notion can light a spark in young adults’ minds, which can lead the way for the freedom of people who are oppressed or wrongfully executed. Furthermore, the book does not harm Christian faith in young minds. In fact it can strengthen that faith. This novel can challenge the minds of the readers. Therefore, it should not be removed from schools. The purpose of sending young adults to school is for them to learn about the world around them. It is just as crucial for young adults to learn the world around them is filled with injustices, as it is for them to learn the world can be a just place. The way young adults learn is by challenging their minds, not sheltering them.

Works Cited

Campbell, Patty. “The Sand in the Oyster.” The Horn Book Magazine. Vol. LXIX.6: Nov.-Dec. 1993: 717-721.

Holy Bible, The. New International Version. Grand Rapids, Michigan: The Zondervan Corporation, 2005.

Lord, Elyse. “The Giver.” Novels for Students. Gale Research: 1998.

Lowry, Lois. The Giver. New York: Delacorte, 1993.

Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Signet Classics, 1977.