It is extraordinary how Blake's peculiar use of very simple rhymes, with the same words repeated over and over again, enhances the power of his poetry—it does more than enhance it—it is the body of its soul. One approaches here the very mystery of style, in the poetic medium, and some of its deepest secrets. Just as that "metaphysic in sensuality" which is the dominant impulse in the genius of Remy de Gourmont expresses itself in constant echoes and reiterated liturgical repetitions—such as his famous "fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence"—until one feels that the "refrain" in poetry has become, in an especial sense, his predominant note, so these constantly recurring rhymes in the work of Blake, coming at the end of very short lines, convey, as nothing else could do, the child-like quality of the spirit transfused through them. They are childlike; and yet they could not have been written by any one but a grown man, and a man of formidable strength and character.
The psychology of the situation is doubtless the same as that which we remark in certain very modern artists—the ones whose work is most of all bewildering to those who, in their utter inability to become as "little children," are as completely shut out from the kingdom of art as they are from the kingdom of heaven.
The curious spell which these simple and in some cases infantile rhymes cast over us, ought to compel the more fanatical adherents of "free verse" to rearrange their ideas. Those who, without any prejudice one way or the other, are only anxious to enjoy to the full every subtle pleasure which the technique of art is able to give, cannot help finding in the unexpected thrill produced by these sweet, soft vibrations of verbal melody—like the sound of a golden bell rung far down under the humming waters—a direct revelation of the tender, strong soul behind them, for whose hidden passion they find a voice.
After all, it is in the final impression produced upon our senses and intellect by a great artist, and not in any particular quality of a particular work of art, that—unless we are pedantic virtuosos—we weigh and judge what we have gained. And what we have gained by William Blake cannot be over-estimated.
His poems seem to associate themselves with a thousand evanescent memories of days when we have been happy beyond the power of calamity or disappointment. They associate themselves with those half-physical, half-spiritual trances—when, suddenly in the outskirts of a great city perhaps, or on the banks of some inland river, we have remembered the long line of breaking surf, and the murmurs and the scents of the sea. They associate themselves with the dreamy indescribable moments when crossing the wet grass of secluded misty meadows, passing the drowsy cattle and the large cool early morning shadows thrown by the trees, we have suddenly come upon cuckoo flowers or marigolds, every petal of which seems burdened with a mystery almost intolerably sweet.
Like the delicate pictures of early Italian art, the poems of Blake indicate and suggest rather than exhaust or satiate. One is never oppressed by too heavy a weight of natural beauty. A single tree against the sky—a single shadow upon the pathway—a single petal fallen on the grass; these are enough to transport us to those fields of light and "chambers of the sun" where the mystic dance of creation still goes on; these are enough to lead us to the hushed dew-drenched lawns where the Lord God walks in the garden "in the cool of the day."
One associates the poetry of William Blake, not with the mountain peaks and gorgeous foliage and rushing torrents of a landscape that clamours to be admired and would fain overpower us with its picturesque appeal, but with the quietest, gentlest, softest, least assuming background to that "going forth" to our work, "and our labour until the evening," which is the normal destiny of man.
The pleasant fields of Felpham with their hawthorne hedges, the little woods of Hertfordshire or Surrey with their patches of bluebells, were all that he needed to set him among the company of the eternal gods.
For this is the prerogative of imagination, that it can reconcile us to life where life is simplest and least adorned; and this is the reluctance and timidity of imagination that it shrinks away into twilight and folds its wings, when the pressure of reality is too heavy, and the materials of beauty too oppressive and tyrannous.