William Blake
William Blake
William Blakewas an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic works have been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 November 1757
The caterpillar on the leaf / Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
The fields from Islington to Marybone, / To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood, / Were builded over with pillars of gold; / And there Jerusalem's pillars stood.
And I made a rural pen, / And I stained the water clear, / And I wrote my happy songs / Every child may joy to hear.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.
The essentials to happiness are something to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
The harlot's cry from street to street / Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.
And now the time returns again: / Our souls exult, and London's towers / Receive the Lamb of God to dwell / In England's green and pleasant bowers.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom...for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough.
A musician, an artist, an architect: the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.
Father, O father! what do we here In this land of unbelief and fear?
O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou build thy dark, Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs, Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
The hand of Vengeance found the Bed To which the Purple Tyrant fled The iron hand crush'd the tyrant's head And became Tyrant in his stead.