A first, Blake starts off rather easy and relaxing, but after his Songs of Innocence and Experience he becomes more of a difficult and crazy read. I was scathing my head at some points wondering what in the word was I reading. However, I really like his imagination.

Besides him being a huge fan of Milton, I can see that Lovecraft borrowed his ideas as well. While Lovecraft focused more on insanity, he and Blake both came up with their own world and mythology. As a writer, I think that's very impressive.

I noticed a lot of these poems are really long too. Some took more than a day to read. Not sure I'd call them epics, but they felt like short novels. Damn these Romantics liked to write long poems. They also can get a little too preachy at times. I liked most of Blake's poems, but some of the religious ones felt forced. At least he actually read the Bible and isn't making up facts about the faith. It's hard to tell what he was religiously though. I doubt he was atheist, maybe deist or agnostic?

Regardless, just giving you all a heads up don't read this thinking this is like modern poetry you can read before bed, you probably won't go to bed cause you're busy reading a 200 page poem.

Also, this book doesn't include Blake's wonderful drawings. Thanks to the power of public domain you can easily find all the illustrations on line and else were though. So really, I'd give this book 4.5 stars for that reason. ( )

Poem

This book contains Songs of Innocence and of Experience, followed by an Appendix containing A Divine Image and The Book of Thel. My favourite poems are in Songs of Experience. They are darker and more critical of society, human nature and the Church than the Songs of Innocence. As they are well out of copyright, I will include a couple of them here.

The Garden of Love

I laid me down upon a bank
Where Love lay sleeping
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping

Then I went to the heath and the wild
To the thistles and thorns of the waste
And they told me how they were beguiled
Driven out, and compelled to the chaste

I went to the Garden of Love
And saw what I never had seen
A Chapel was built in the midst
Where I used to play on the green

And the gates of this Chapel were shut
And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore

And I saw it was filled with graves
And tombstones where flowers should be
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds
And binding with briars my joys and desires

London

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.

How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every blackening church appalls;
And the hapless soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse. ( )

An awesome little book full of great poems. Blake is a favorite of mine so I was very happy to get my hands on this and add it to my library! ( )

William Blake was a major influence on Allen Ginsberg and on 'Howl,' especially 'Footnote to Howl' with its exclamations of 'Holy! Holy! Holy!' and ecstatic repetition.