Prison’d on watry shore
Starry Jealousy does keep my den.
Moreover, Blake’s figures are often presented in an imaginative guise that helps to emphasize the gulf fixed between him and the majority of his contemporaries and predecessors. Thus “Joy” is twice depicted as a bird:
Joys upon our branches sit
Chirping loud and singing sweet
(“Song”—“Poetical Sketches”)
and
Welcome, stranger, to this place
Where Joy doth sit on every bough.
(“Song by a Shepherd”)