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
How sweet I roamed from field to field, and tasted all the summer's pride.
The countless gold of a merry heart,The rubies and pearls of a loving eye,The indolent never can bring to the mart,Nor the secret hoard up in his treasury.
If you trap the moment before it's ripe, The tears of repentance you'll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go, You can never wipe off the tears of woe
In every cry of every man,In every infant's cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forged manacles I hear.
Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius
The crow wished everything was black, the owl, that every thing was white.
The Child's Toys and the Old Man's ReasonsAre the Fruits of the Two seasons.
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.
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.