WILLIAM BLAKE: GOLDEN STRING

In about 1804 Blake gathered together ten poems he had written but not published. He made fair copies which he saved in a booklet. Among the poems was The Mental Traveller, an enigmatic poem in twenty six verses. Pickering acquired the manuscript in 1865. The following year he published Songs of Innocence and Experience, and Other Poems, edited by R. H. Shepherd and including the ten poems in his manuscript. Three years later Edwin John Ellis and William Butler Yeats included The Mental Traveller in The Works of William Blake: Poetic, Symbolic and Critical. The original manuscript in Blake's hand now resides in The Morgan Library and Museum.

Yeats confessed that "When Edwin J. Ellis and I had finished ourt big book on the philosophy of William Blake, I felt that we had no understanding of this poem."

Songs and Ballads, (E 483)

"The Mental Traveller

I traveld thro' a Land of Men
A Land of Men & Women too
And heard & saw such dreadful things
As cold Earth wanderers never knew

For there the Babe is born in joy   
That was begotten in dire woe
   
Just as we Reap in joy the fruit
Which we in bitter tears did sow

And if the Babe is born a Boy
He's given to a Woman Old      
Who nails him down upon a rock
Catches his Shrieks in Cups of gold

She binds iron thorns around his head
She pierces both his hands & feet
She cuts his heart out at his side   
To make it feel both cold & heat

Her fingers number every Nerve
just as a Miser counts his gold
She lives upon his shrieks & cries
And She grows young as he grows old   

Till he becomes a bleeding youth
And she becomes a Virgin bright
Then he rends up his Manacles
And binds her down for his delight

He plants himself in all her Nerves   
Just as a Husbandman his mould
And She becomes his dwelling place
And Garden fruitful Seventy fold

An aged Shadow soon he fades
Wandring round an Earthly Cot  
Full filled all with gems & gold
Which he by industry had got

And these are the gems of the Human Soul
The rubies & pearls of a lovesick eye
The countless gold of the akeing heart  
The martyrs groan & the lovers sigh

They are his meat they are his drink
He feeds the Beggar & the Poor
And the way faring Traveller
For ever open is his door       

His grief is their eternal joy
They make the roofs & walls to ring
Till from the fire on the hearth
A little Female Babe does spring

And she is all of solid fire     
And gems & gold that none his hand
Dares stretch to touch her Baby form
Or wrap her in his swaddling-band

But She comes to the Man she loves
If young or old or rich or poor    
They soon drive out the aged Host
A Begger at anothers door

He wanders weeping far away
Untill some other take him in
Oft blind & age-bent sore distrest   
Untill he can a Maiden win

And to Allay his freezing Age
The Poor Man takes her in his arms
The Cottage fades before his Sight
The Garden & its lovely Charms    

The Guests are scatterd thro' the land
For the Eye altering alters all
The Senses roll themselves in fear
And the flat Earth becomes a Ball

The Stars Sun Moon all shrink away  
A desart vast without a bound
And nothing left to eat or drink
And a dark desart all around

The honey of her Infant lips
The bread & wine of her sweet smile  
The wild game of her roving Eye
Does him to Infancy beguile

For as he eats & drinks he grows
Younger & younger every day
And on the desart wild they both    
Wander in terror & dismay

Like the wild Stag she flees away
Her fear plants many a thicket wild
While he pursues her night & day
By various arts of Love beguild    

By various arts of Love & Hate
Till the wide desart planted oer
With Labyrinths of wayward Love
Where roams the Lion Wolf & Boar   

Till he becomes a wayward Babe     
And she a weeping Woman Old        
Then many a Lover wanders here       
The Sun & Stars are nearer rolld

The trees bring forth sweet Extacy
To all who in the desart roam     
Till many a City there is Built
And many a pleasant Shepherds home

But when they find the frowning Babe
Terror strikes thro the region wide
They cry the Babe the Babe is Born    
And flee away on Every side                   

For who dare touch the frowning form
His arm is witherd to its root
Lions Boars Wolves all howling flee
And every Tree does shed its fruit    

And none can touch that frowning form
Except it be a Woman Old
She nails him down upon the Rock
And all is done as I have told"

Links to earlier posts which attempt to clarify some of what Blake was saying in his poem will be presented in the next post.

Saturday, May 2, 2026

OPEN THE DOOR

First posted Oct 2020

Wikipedia Commons
Book of Urizen
Copy G, Plate 26

When I asked Larry which of Blake's pictures he liked best he selected this one without an explanation. His response to the picture was not rational but emotional and intuitive. I can now give a rational explanation to his reaction to the image.

Larry saw through the image to those who stand outside of the closed door. The pleading child and the howling dog are on the outside without a way to get in. To Larry and to Blake this was the plight of humanity; the door is not closed because we are locked out of Eden but because we fail to open it. Built into the mind of man is his Divine Humanity but it is up to the conscious man to open the door or gate and invite the expression of his spirit into his expanded mind.

The poignancy of this image to me is that in adolescence when individuals are re-accessing the assumptions of their childhood, they may close the door to a perception of the internal vision of the Divine. Once the door is closed there has to be a decisive action to reopen it. If the mind of the individual has been turned over to the reasoning faculty exclusively, and the intuition and imagination have been stifled, there is little probability that the door to spiritual experience will be reopened.

But all is not lost. Some become disillusioned with a one-sided dependence on reason through seeing its failure to provide a balanced way of living. Some are given an opening into a fuller life through a spontaneous awakening of the spirit. Some quietly find the lost piece from their childhood by continuing to seek for it in beauty, truth and love. As Pilgrim learned in Pilgrim's Progress we already possess the key, we needn't wait for someone to give it to us.

Milton Plate 2, (E 96)
"Come into my hand
By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm
From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry

The Eternal Great Humanity Divine. planted his Paradise,
And in it caus'd the Spectres of the Dead to take sweet forms
In likeness of himself. Tell also of the False Tongue! vegetated
Beneath your land of shadows: of its sacrifices. and
Its offerings; even till Jesus, the image of the Invisible God
Became its prey; a curec, an offering, and an atonement,
For Death Eternal in the heavens of Albion, & before the Gates
Of Jerusalem his Emanation, in the heavens beneath Beulah" 

Milton, Plate 10 [11], (E 104)
"The nature of a Female Space is this: it shrinks the Organs
Of Life till they become Finite & Itself seems Infinite.   

And Satan vibrated in the immensity of the Space! Limited
To those without but Infinite to those within: it fell down and
Became Canaan: closing Los from Eternity in Albions Cliffs     
A mighty Fiend against the Divine Humanity mustring to War"

Milton, Plate 13 [14], (E 107)
"The Bard replied. I am Inspired! I know it is Truth! for I Sing
Plate 14 [15]
According to the inspiration of the Poetic Genius
Who is the eternal all-protecting Divine Humanity
To whom be Glory & Power & Dominion Evermore Amen"

Milton 30 [33], (E 129)
"But to
The Sons of Eden the moony habitations of Beulah,
Are from Great Eternity a mild & pleasant Rest.

And it is thus Created. Lo the Eternal Great Humanity            
To whom be Glory & Dominion Evermore Amen
Walks among all his awful Family seen in every face
As the breath of the Almighty. such are the words of man to man
In the great Wars of Eternity, in fury of Poetic Inspiration,
To build the Universe stupendous: Mental forms Creating"         

Jerusalem, Plate 19, (E 164)
"And Los was roofd in from Eternity in Albions Cliffs
Which stand upon the ends of Beulah, and withoutside, all
Appear'd a rocky form against the Divine Humanity.               

Albions Circumference was clos'd: his Center began darkning
Into the Night of Beulah, and the Moon of Beulah rose
Clouded with storms: Los his strong Guard walkd round beneath the Moon
And Albion fled inward among the currents of his rivers."  

Four Zoas, Night II, PAGE 36, (E 325) 
"To listen to the hungry ravens cry in wintry season
When the red blood is filld with wine & with the marrow of lambs

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter
     house moan
To see a god on every wind & a blessing on every blast           
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies house
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, & the sickness 
     that cuts off his children
While our olive & vine sing & laugh round our door & our children bring fruits & flowers

Then the groan & the dolor are quite forgotten & the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains & the poor in the prison, & the soldier in the field
When the shatterd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity
Thus could I sing & thus rejoice, but it is not so with me!"

Urizen, Plate 24, (E 81)
"4. He in darkness clos'd, view'd all his race,
And his soul sicken'd! he curs'd
Both sons & daughters; for he saw
That no flesh nor spirit could keep                        
His iron laws one moment.

5. For he saw that life liv'd upon death
Plate 25
The Ox in the slaughter house moans
The Dog at the wintry door
And he wept, & he called it Pity
And his tears flowed down on the winds"

Wednesday, April 29, 2026

NELSON HILTON

First posed August 2023

Title - Blake An Illustrated Quarterly - 1999

Article - www.english.uga.edu/wblake

by Nelson Hilton

"The 'Blake Digital Text Project' (http://www.english.uga.edu/wblake) originated in 1994 with the desire to create an electronic, online, interactive, enhanced version of the long out-of-print 1967 Concordance to the Writings of William Blake, edited by David V. Erdman."

[ An online Concordance to Blake is available now at:

http://victorian-studies.net/concordance/blake/ ]

When Nelson Hilton was Professor of English at the University of Georgia he worked at making Erdman's The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake accessible in digitized form. He indexed Blake's works and linked each item with the file containing the contents. Unlike Erdman's book he included line numbers for easy referencing. Page numbers from the book were on each line.

When Hilton left the University of Georgia, the Blake digitizing project migrated to the University of Arizona with which Hilton became associated.

Each section of Erdman's book is easily located in this listing of the contents. It is convenient to click on any listing and read the selection that interests you.

Contents, The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake

https://blake.lib.asu.edu/html/home.html

In Hilton's CONTENTS here is text from America:

America, Plate 3, (E 51)

Am1.1; E51    "The shadowy daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc.
Am1.2; E51    When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode;
Am1.3; E51    His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron;
Am1.4; E51    Crown'd with a helmet & dark hair the nameless female stood;
Am1.5; E51    A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
Am1.6; E51    When pestilence is shot from heaven; no other arms she need:
Am1.7; E51    Invulnerable tho' naked, save where clouds roll round her loins,
Am1.8; E51    Their awful folds in the dark air; silent she stood as night;
Am1.9; E51    For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise;
Am1.10; E51 But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay'd his fierce        embrace.

Am1.11; E51 Dark virgin; said the hairy youth, thy father stern abhorr'd;
Am1.12; E51 Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;
Am1.13; E51 Sometimes an eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a lion,
Am1.14; E51 Stalking upon the mountains, & sometimes a whale I lash
Am1.15; E51 The raging fathomless abyss, anon a serpent folding

Am1.16; E51 Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs,
Am1.17; E51 On the Canadian wilds I fold, feeble my spirit folds.
Am1.18; E51 For chaind beneath I rend these caverns; when thou bringest food
Am1.19; E51 I howl my joy! and my red eyes seek to behold thy face
Am1.20; E51 In vain! these clouds roll to & fro, & hide thee from my sight."

Wikipedia Commons

America

Plate 3

Los (Time) and Enitharmon (Space) children of Enion and Urthona (Nature and Spirit) become themselves the parents of Orc (the spirit of change or revolution.)

So Blake announces that he will write about things happening in the natural word but clothed in symbols which will hide and reveal reality as befits his myth of creation, fall, redemption and apocalypse.

We find the daughter of Urthona - a manifestation of Urthona in the Natural World - providing the food of dissension to Orc who is approaching maturity. She is armed with a supply of ideas and the means to direct them, but it takes the awakening of the revolutionary spirit to give them voice. Incidents that demand change repeatedly occur but a clear view of a way forward is not in sight.

Four Zoas, Night VII, Page 79, (E 355)

"Urizen answerd Read my books explore my Constellations 
Enquire of my Sons & they shall teach thee how to War
Enquire of my Daughters who accursd in the dark depths
Knead bread of Sorrow by my stern command for I am God
Of all this dreadful ruin   Rise O daughters at my Stern command

Rending the Rocks Eleth & Uveth rose & Ona rose       
Terrific with their iron vessels driving them across
In the dim air they took the book of iron & placd above
On clouds of death & sang their songs Kneading the bread of Orc
Orc listend to the song compelld hungring on the cold wind
That swaggd heavy with the accursed dough. the hoar frost ragd   
Thro Onas sieve   the torrent rain pourd from the iron pail
Of Eleth & the icy hands of Uveth kneaded the bread
The heavens bow with terror underneath their iron hands
Singing at their dire work the words of Urizens book of iron
While the enormous scrolls rolld dreadful in the heavens above   
And still the burden of their song in tears was poured forth
The bread is Kneaded let us rest O cruel father of children
But Urizen remitted not their labours upon his rock"

Sunday, April 26, 2026

Events of Fall

Previously posted Nov 2018

Yale Center for British Art
Jerusalem
Plate 19

Always fiercely eclectic, Blake has gathered his symbols here from a number of sources into a new creation: sleeping man equals fallen man living in darkness; this most general symbol fills the New Testament. For example, "Awake thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light". We live by the light of reason (not always Christ's light!). Urizen, the Sun God, must be asleep to allow Luvah, like the Greek adolescent, Phaethon, to seize his Horses of Light and rise into the Chariot of Day. Zeus struck Phaethon down with a thunderbolt in the story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Blake used Ovid as a primary source for his borrowings from Greek mythology.

In Night ii we will find Urizen casting Luvah into the furnaces of affliction, where there is much heat but no light. What was once eternal delight has become unmitigated hell.

Luvah and Vala personify the masculine and feminine dimensions of feeling, and séparated from Luvah, Vala becomes the goddess of fallen nature. Luvah's seizure of the sun and Vala's dalliance on the pillow express in different ways the same event. The Prince of Love is bound to get his wings scorched, and the sleeping Albion is rather foolish to allow this to happen; he has lost his head over a part of himself.

Blake used this double event to say many things to us at many levels. Fundamentally Blake is saying that Man has lost his heavenly wholeness (which he calls the Divine Image) and begun to worship the material, a relatively insignificant part of himself. He turns his back upon the Divine Vision in his dream of Vala. The former is Eternal Life and the latter Eternal Death. The dalliance of Albion with Vala leads to the Eternal Death (fallenness) that we read about in the first six nights. Blake described it symbolically, in many ways, for example, "to converse in the wilds of Newton and Locke". We find here Blake's primary dialectic, between eternal vision and fallen materialism.

Other accounts of this decisive event occur at various places throughout the Four Zoas. The most definitive is that of Ahania. Her dream relates the central event, the primary fall, to an idolatrous worship; just so Blake evaluated organized religion. Albion's worship of his shadow has two immediate consequences: he breaks out with the boils of Job, a biblical symbol of the Fall of Mankind, and he exiles Luvah and Vala from their rightful place in the psychic economy.

__________________________

There are at least six occurrences of the story which I call the central event of the Fall:

K=Keynes, E=Erdman

Enitharmon's Song of Death Night i. 261-80 K 271-2 --- (E 305)

Ambassadors from Beulah i. 484-559 K277-9 --- (E 311)

Ahania's vision iii. 42-102 K 292-4 --- (E 326)

The Spectre of Urthona (first) iv. 84-110 K 299-300 --- (E 334)

The Shadow of Enitharmon vii. 239-64 K 326 --- (E 358)

The Spectre of Urthona (second) vii. 277-98 K 327 --- (E 359)

See Summary

Monday, April 13, 2026

Primer - Myth

British Museum
Illustration of the Prodigal Son.

Blake Archive
The Prodigal Son's return to his father.

Fitzwilliam Museum
The father's reception of his son.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Plate 45, (E 26)

"And God like a father rejoicing to see,

His children as pleasant and happy as he:

Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel

But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel."

Myth -This passage is from Larry Clayton's book, Chapter Nine:

"Many people have called William Blake unique among English poets as the creator of a complete mythology. In a standard dictionary "without foundation in fact" appears as the fifth meaning of 'mythical', but this is probably what the term conveys in common parlance. Therefore we must begin our study of Blake's myth by raising our consciousness of the word. 'Logos', 'myth', 'epic'--these three words have a common root. In literary and theological language myths are statements about the non-material ultimate . Some people of course avoid the non-material, considering it to be without foundation in fact; it's doubtful that any such reader has endured to his point of our study.

Blake considered the non-material to be the real; his art centered around the endeavour to express the reality of the non-material. The meaning of his entire artistic enterprise we may call his myth. His object was to fit all of experience into a total framework of meaning that will inform life. Our object is to grasp that total framework; once we do that, we have a myth of meaning.

The diagram below schematically represents the shape of Blake's myth. All his poetic and artistic work fits into this scheme of cosmic/psychic meaning.

Only four of an infinite number of possible examples are included. The first is a general statement of Blake's scheme. Second with his story of the Prodigal Son in which Jesus gave us a personal paradigm of the history of the Chosen People and of the Human Race. Third is the career of alcoholism's progressive deterioration until the sufferer hits bottom, followed by recovery, providing a striking modern analogy, although not Blakean per se. Blake did use as a recurring motif the story of Lazarus found in the Gospel of John. But the primary paradigm of this myth is the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. However Blake did not express this, probably did not fully realize it, until 1800 when he experiened an awakening.

This chapter illustrates the application of this fundamental myth in Blake's major poetic works. The development of Blake's epic will be traced through the various stages of his spiritual journey. In essence it's the same journey we all take; you could call it the history of Man. Blake called it the Circle of Destiny."

Friday, April 3, 2026

LIFE AS METAPHOR

First Posted March 2015

Few people who read Blake would deny that he is attempting to make his reader change the way he perceives his world. Our minds have been trained to see separate entities which are clearly differentiated. We have learned that things are either one thing or another. We measure and define, explain and rationalize.

But what if words were pointers to ideas which were too big to be contained in words. What if each word opened the mind to ever expanding vistas of movement and activity. What if there were gates through which you could pass to enter unknown worlds. What if the world to which imagination can take us were all around us and inside us as well. What if we traveled through images of reality in a body which belongs to Eternity. Such a world would be the environs in which William Blake lived.

Blake's life can be thought of as a metaphor which he was using to describe the world which senses cannot access. He lived the joy and woe which permeates his poetic and visual images. He lived the death and the resurrection, and the journey of experience which connects the two. It was not enough to him to portray the Eternal, Infinite, Invisible world, he wanted to give access to that world to the brotherhood of man.

You are given the opportunity of viewing your own life as metaphor. You can become conscious that what we call reality is a mask which covers an "an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five". Your imagination will be expanded as was Blake's by exercising your "immortal Eyes ... inward into the Worlds of Thought".

Jerusalem, Plate 5, (E 147)
"Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish'd at me.
Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination        
O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love:
Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life!"

Four Zoas, Night VIII, Page 114, (E 385)
"he [Man] rises to the Sun
And to the Planets of the Night & to the stars that gild
The Zodiac & the stars that sullen stand to north & south
He touches the remotest pole & in the Center weeps
That Man should Labour & sorrow & learn & forget & return
To the dark valley whence he came to begin his labours anew
In pain he sighs in pain he labours in his universe
Screaming in birds over the deep & howling in the Wolf
Over the slain & moaning in the cattle & in the winds
And weeping over Orc & Urizen in clouds & flaming fires  
And in the cries of birth & in the groans of death his voice 
Is heard throughout the Universe whereever a grass grows
Or a leaf buds   The Eternal Man is seen is heard   is felt
And all his Sorrows till he reassumes his ancient bliss

Such are the words of Ahania & Enion. Los hears & weeps  
And Los & Enitharmon took the Body of the Lamb 
Down from the Cross & placd it in a Sepulcher which Los had hewn
For himself in the Rock of Eternity trembling & in despair 
Jerusalem wept over the Sepulcher two thousand Years"

Songs of Innocence & of Experience, Plate 9, (E 9)
"And we are put on earth a little space, 
we may learn to bear the beams of love,
...
SONGS 10  
For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice."

WILLIAM BLAKE: GOLDEN STRING

Friday, May 15, 2026

BLAKE'S MENTAL TRAVELLER

MENTAL TRAVELLER 1-3

MENTAL TRAVELLER 4-6

MENTAL TRAVELLER 7-9

MENTAL TRAVELLER 10-12

MENTAL TRAVELLER 13-15

MENTAL TRAVELLER 16-18

MENTAL TRAVELLER 19-21

MENTAL TRAVELLER 22-24

MENTAL TRAVELLER 25-26

MENTAL TRAVELLER CONCLUSION

READING MENTAL TRAVELLER

Saturday, May 2, 2026

OPEN THE DOOR

Wednesday, April 29, 2026

NELSON HILTON

Title - Blake An Illustrated Quarterly - 1999

Article - www.english.uga.edu/wblake

by Nelson Hilton

Sunday, April 26, 2026

Events of Fall

Monday, April 13, 2026

Primer - Myth

Friday, April 3, 2026

LIFE AS METAPHOR

DIVINE ECONOMY

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