GROVE

Tate

Blake's Illustrations to Dante

Homer and the Ancient Poets

 

First Posed Feb 2015 

Songs of Innocence, Songs 9 and 10, (E 9)
Little Black Boy

"....And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

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 and care
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice...',"

  

Jerusalem, Plate 38, (E 184)

 "If we are wrathful Albion will destroy Jerusalem with rooty Groves
If we are merciful, ourselves must suffer destruction on his Oaks:
Why should we enter into our Spectres. to behold our own corruptions
O God of Albion descend! deliver Jerusalem from the Oaken Groves!"
 
Jerusalem, Plate 6, (E 217)
"For a Spectre has no Emanation but what he imbibes from decieving
A Victim! Then he becomes her Priest & she his Tabernacle.
And his Oak Grove. till the Victim rend the woven Veil."
  (See also Matthew 27:51)

Jerusalem, Plate 25, (E 170)
"Why did you take Vengeance O ye Sons of the mighty Albion?

Planting these Oaken Groves: Erecting these Dragon Temples
Injury the Lord heals but Vengeance cannot be healed:            
As the Sons of Albion have done to Luvah: so they have in him
Done to the Divine Lord & Saviour, who suffers with those that suffer:
For not one sparrow can suffer, & the whole Universe not suffer also,
In all its Regions, & its Father & Saviour not pity and weep.
But Vengeance is the destroyer of Grace & Repentance in the bosom
Of the Injurer: in which the Divine Lamb is cruelly slain:
Descend O Lamb of God & take away the imputation of Sin
By the Creation of States & the deliverance of Individuals Evermore Amen"

Blake's Notebook, My Spectre, (E 476)
"Till I turn from Female love
And root up the Infernal Grove,
I shall never worthy be
To step into Eternity.
 
Let us agree to give up love,
And root up the Infernal Grove;
Then shall we return and see
The worlds of happy Eternity."

Notice that the 'love' in the last verse is the 'female love' of the earlier one. This 'love' in Blake's poetry is nothing like godly love; in fact it's just the opposite; it's love of fallen materiality- love of things, like Money, Golf, or Whiskey, or your Stomach; see (See Philippians 3:19)

So what did Blake mean with his groves. Damon said it's a "symbol of error"; I say it's a symbol of the 'fallen material world' where the Druid Priests built their Temples and Altars.

Blake used thousands of words to describe his primary myth: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Return, and many many pictures to portray it, and many, many capsules of two lines that state it. He wanted us to get it.

"Planting these Oaken Groves: 

Erecting these Dragon Temples" (Erdman 170)

"Patriarchal Pillars & Oak Groves over the whole Earth..." (Erdman 171)

"And build this Babylon & sacrifice in secret groves" (E 210)

Psychologically grove may mean our habitual ways of processing experience, the obstructions we place to acting according to the light we possess, the projections which disguise our inner landscapes, our failure to turn to intuitive abilities to seek understanding; any inner structures which prevent us entering the place prepared for us. Blake's grove includes all our prejudices, our hates and fears, our unwillingness or inability to love. 

Blake's calls upon us to leave the oaken groves, to rend the woven veil.