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, I love the laughing vale, I love the pleasant cot, I love the innocent bower, I love the oaken seat, Beneath the oaken tree, I love our neighbours all, 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 But the intrepid islanders are nothing dismayed; “The husbandman now leaves his plough, The shepherd leaves his mellow pipe, Like the tall ghost of Barraton, Gwinn leads his host, as black as night When pestilence doth fly. With horses and with chariots, There all his spearmen bold 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 A sea of blood! nor can the eye See to the trembling shore. And on the verge of this wild sea The shrieks of women and of babes 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. |