چه

It would be unjust to the memory of the painter and poet to omit a song which he composed in honour of that wife who repaid with such sincere affection the regard which he had for her. It has other merits.

"I love the jocund dance,

The softly breathing song,
Where innocent eyes do glance,
And lisps the maiden's tongue.

I love the laughing vale,
I love the echoing hill,
Where mirth is never mute,
And jolly lads laugh their fill.

I love the pleasant cot,

I love the innocent bower,
Where brown bread is our lot,
And fruit at the mid-day hour.

I love the oaken seat,

Beneath the oaken tree,
Where all the old villagers meet,
And laugh our sports to see.

I love our neighbours all,
But, Kate, I most love thee,
And love thee I ever shall,
For thou art all to me."

Images of a sterner nature than those of domestic love were, however, at all times, familiar to his fancy; I have shown him softened down to the mood of babes and sucklings; I shall exhibit him in a more martial temper. In a ballad, which he calls Gwinn, King of Norway, there are many

vigorous verses

the fierce Norwegian has in

vaded England with all his eager warriors.

"Like reared stones around a grave
They stand around their king.'

But the intrepid islanders are nothing dismayed;
they gather to the charge; these are the words of
Blake forty-six years ago;—and this man's poetry
obtained no notice, while Darwin and Hayley
were gorged with adulation.

“The husbandman now leaves his plough,
To wade through fields of gore,
The merchant binds his brows in steel,
And leaves the trading shore.

The shepherd leaves his mellow pipe,
And sounds the trumpet shrill,
The workman throws his hammer down,
To heave the bloody bill.

Like the tall ghost of Barraton,
Who sports in stormy sky,

Gwinn leads his host, as black as night

When pestilence doth fly.

With horses and with chariots,

There all his spearmen bold
March to the sound of mournful song,

Like clouds around him rolled.

The armies stand like balances

Held in the Almighty's hand,

Gwinn, thou hast filled thy measure up,

Thou'rt swept from English land.

Earth smokes with blood, and groans and shakes
To drink her children's gore,

A sea of blood! nor can the eye

See to the trembling shore.

And on the verge of this wild sea
Famine and Death do cry,

The shrieks of women and of babes
Around the field do fly."

As Blake united poetry and painting in all his compositions, I have endeavoured to show that his claims to the distinction of a poet were not slight. He wrought much and slept little, and has left volumes of verse, amounting, it is said, to nearly an hundred, prepared for the press. If they are as wild and mystical as the poetry of his Urizen, they are as well in manuscript if they are as natural and touching as many of his songs of Innocence, a judicious selection might be safely published.