“The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother’s grief.”
In the abstract this might perhaps mean something, though it would, I think, take most people some time to see what it could mean. In the abstract it may perhaps involve some allusion to a universal law of sacrifice in nature. In the concrete—that is, in the context—it involves no allusion to anything in heaven or earth. Here is another couplet that constantly recurs—
“The red blood ran from the grey monk’s side,
His hands and his feet were wounded wide.”
This is worse still; for this cannot be merely abstract. The ordinary rational reader will naturally exclaim at last, with a not unnatural explosion, “Who the devil is the grey monk? and why should he be always bleeding in places where he has no business?” Now to say that this sort of thing is not insanity of some kind is simply to play the fool with the words. A madman who writes this may be higher than ordinary humanity; so may any madman in Hanwell. But he is a madman in every sense that the word has among men. I have taken this case of actual and abrupt irrelevance as the strongest form of the thing; but it has other forms almost equally decisive. For instance, Blake had a strong sense of humour, but it was not under control; it could be eclipsed and could completely disappear. There was certainly a spouting fountain of fierce laughter in the man who could write in an epigram—
“A dirty sneaking knave I knew ...
Oh, Mr. Cromek, how do you do?”
THE TYGER (1794)