Cold he lies in the grave below.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed
All under the willow-tree.”
[20.] William Blake (1757-1827), one of the most original poets that ever lived, was born in London in the year 1757. He was brought up as an engraver; worked steadily at his business, and did a great deal of beautiful work in that capacity. He in fact illustrated his own poems—each page being set in a fantastic design of his own invention, which he himself engraved. He was also his own printer and publisher. The first volume of his poems was published in 1783; the Songs of Innocence, probably his best, appeared in 1787. He died in Fountain Court, Strand, London, in the year 1827.
[21.] His latest critic says of Blake: “His detachment from the ordinary currents of practical thought left to his mind an unspoiled and delightful simplicity which has perhaps never been matched in English poetry.” Simplicity—the perfect simplicity of a child—
beautiful simplicity—simple and childlike beauty,—such is the chief note of the poetry of Blake. “Where he is successful, his work has the fresh perfume and perfect grace of a flower.” The most remarkable point about Blake is that, while living in an age when the poetry of Pope—and that alone—was everywhere paramount, his poems show not the smallest trace of Pope’s influence, but are absolutely original. His work, in fact, seems to be the first bright streak of the golden dawn that heralded the approach of the full and splendid daylight of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Shelley and Byron. His best-known poems are those from the ‘Songs of Innocence’—such as Piping down the valleys wild; The Lamb; The Tiger, and others. Perhaps the most remarkable element in Blake’s poetry is the sweetness and naturalness of the rhythm. It seems careless, but it is always beautiful; it grows, it is not made; it is like a wild field-flower thrown up by Nature in a pleasant green field. Such are the rhythms in the poem entitled Night:—
“The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,