The Poems of William Blake William Blake

The concept of universal human suffering permeates through William Blake's dolorous poem "London," which depicts a city of causalities fallen to their own psychological and ideological demoralization. Though the poem is set in the London of...

The word apocalypse derives from the Greek word meaning "revelation", lending its name to the last book of the New Testament, The Book of Revelations. It refers to a prophetic vision which, through elaborate and often violent symbolism, signals an...

"Jerusalem," by William Blake, is a contemplative portrayal of England's development during the time period in question. This poem is concerned with the theme of England's loss of innocence; this is important because it shows that development is...

William Blake’s Abolitionism

“I know my Execution is not like Any Body Else I do not intend it should be so.”

William Blake is arguably one of the most eccentric and enigmatic artists of the Romantic era. His ideas about religion, art and society...

“The Human Abstract” offers an alternative analysis of the virtues of Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love that constituted God and Man in “The Divine Image”, and can be thus considered a companion poem. The speaker argues that Pity could not exist...

Blake's “The Tyger” begins with the speaker asking a tiger what kind of divine being could have created it: “What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” There is an air of questioning throughout the poem. Each subsequent stanza...

In “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1793), Blake writes with a strong prophetic voice, bringing forth a new set of proverbs, a new poetics, twisting and flipping traditional wisdom. Blake challenges the status quo, questioning stagnant,...

“Poetry,” said Robert Frost “is a way of seizing life by the throat.” Not having been equipped with the media and technology of today, poets of the post-1770s era often approached their poetry in this fashion. They took advantage of the freedom of...

The motif of the fall of man is quite often used in poems and prose alike. More specifically, William Blake uses the motif of the fall of man in his poem The Book of Thel as well as in his poem The Shepherd. Blake, in this case, uses this motif in...

In an era driven by rationalism and logic, the poets and authors of the Romantic era sought to defend what they understood as a more natural system of values. Among the themes prevalent throughout the era, the theme of the imagination's power is...

Social hierarchies function to elevate a group of elite citizens to a superior position, thus resulting in the disempowerment of groups that are below them in rank. William Blake was one of 18th century Britain’s most prolific Romantic poets,...

William Blake, in his work There Is No Natural Religion, and William Wordsworth, in his poem 1799 Prelude, challenge John Locke’s understanding of the nature of the self by offering alternative theories as to the ways in which we as humans...

William Blake, as a libertarian and political writer concerned with Romantic values concerning the freedom of the human spirit and liberty, wrote his ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ in an attempt to attack the corrupt political systems and...

In his iconic poem The Tyger, William Blake directly addresses the paradoxically beautiful yet horrific figure with a question: What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? This simple question, wondering how and what divine being...

. William Blake, in line with his standing as a Romantic and being both politically and ideologically a libertarian, can be seen in his ‘Songs of Innocence’ to express his views as to the superlative value of the freedom of the human spirit, by...

Writing on nineteenth-century London poetry, William Sharpe comments that ‘Regardless of shared reference to sublimity, fog, of Babylonian blindness, each poet’s London is different. Each time we read ‘London’ we have to begin again.’ For poets in...

“The Poison Tree” from William Blake’s Songs of Experience is a poem that tells the story of one who is engulfed by the hatred felt towards a foe. This individual begins with telling the fury they experienced toward a friend who is told told of...

A defining characteristic of William Blake’s poetry is that his poems are intended to be in conversation with one another. Blake allows his poetry to speak by using dialectically opposite images. Blake prominently uses Christian images in his...

Blake explores ideas of power and corruption consistently throughout his two collections. Most notably corruption tends to focus around particular elements of society such as the Church with which Blake himself took issue. Power is interesting as...

William Blake’s attitude about the poor in his poetry suggests that he is angry at his country, Britain, for allowing so many of its citizens, especially children, to be poor when it’s supposed to be a wealthy global superpower. This is shown...

William Blake, a 19th century romantic poet, wrote poetic arguments in Songs of Innocence and Experience filled with rich imagery and symbolism to convey his, at the time, idiosyncratic views surrounding the church and its negative impact on...

“Infant Joy” describes the feeling of a mother emotionally overwhelmed by the beauty, sweetness, and innocence of her newborn baby; she cannot think or feel anything but joy. The poem belongs to William Blake’s collection Songs of Innocence and...

William Blake’s poems ‘The Tyger’ and ‘Holy Thursday’ - each from his more dysphemistic book ‘Songs of Experience’ - explore and lament the loss of spirituality in the unethical era of the Industrial Revolution. He approaches the topics of man's...

The industrial revolution was greatly opposed by the poets of the Romantic movement, due to its corruption of morality and nature, including the exploitation of children. Rousseau stated that ‘everything degenerates in the hands of man’, fueling...