Reading Notes Week 6: William Blake The Eccentric

William Blake 330 -441 poetry (Volume E)

Blacken was an eccentric in many ways. He seemed to flip flop his belief system constantly.

From believing in god,believing we are all god, to believing in spirits and his dead brother

communicated with him (330,331)

Blake was not a rich man. Mainly due to his lack of commitment to any employer.

Calling one “the enemy of my spiritual life.” (331).

I would have liked to have met him in his life,

as he seemed to care very much for his personal happiness

and the happiness of others just as much.

He tended to isolate himself when things got rough for him (331) but continued to publish or create art.

He was strongly opposed to the social hierarchies and the division of wealth and power.

This made me think of how the times never really change. They just evolve.

He cared very much for children in his poems and was against the use of harsh

child labor that was popular at the time. He wrote many poems referencing children and the

effects that adults have in them. While they are not able to do anything (333)

His themes of works changed throughout his life. There was political, spiritual,and religious works

in his repertoire.  

I found it interesting that he used words together that looked like they might rhyme due to the

formation of their spelling but did not actually sound like a rhyme like you would think (334).

In his poem The Lamb he makes biblical references to Jesus and children. “ for he calls

himself a lamb: he is meek and he is mild, he became a little child:” (335).

In The Little Black Boy we see more biblical verbiage where a mother tells her child of their purpose. They are to do god’s work and serve their masters and their family. The black boy then says to an English (presuming white) 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 learn the joy upon our fathers me; and then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair, and be like him, and he will then love me.” (336)