William Blake (1757 – 1827)
English poet, Christian mystic, painter, printmaker, and engraver.
This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
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.
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.
What is a Wife & what is a Harlot? What is a Church & What
Is a Theatre? are they Two & not One? can they Exist Separate?
Are not Religion & Politics the Same Thing? Brotherhood is Religion
O Demonstrations of Reason Dividing Families in Cruelty & Pride!
Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdened air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold,
Bring me my Arrows of desire,
Bring me my Spear—O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant land.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The iron hand crush'd the Tyrant's head
And became a Tyrant in his stead.
Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.
There is a smile of love,
And there is a smile of deceit,
And there is a smile of smiles
In which these two smiles meet.
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.
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.
Like a fiend in a cloud,
With howling woe,
After night I do crowd,
And with night will go;
I turn my back to the east,
From whence comforts have increased;
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.