his mystical faith and his visions o f a heavenly world. He actually
saw the angels and strange figures which his pictures portrayed.
They sai: beside him in the garden, or in the trees, gathering around
him as naturally as a group of friends. Those visions loosened him
from the material world, in which so much of the eighteenth century
was stuck fast as in a slough of mental despond. Repression he
regarded as evil, though freedom from repression he interpreted
not psychologically, as in the contemporary manner, but mystically.
As a child he was fascinated by the Bible and by the ideas of the
German mystic Jacob Boeme. Blake’s later symbolic works,
including “The Marriage o f Heaven and Hell” (1790), “The Gates
o f Paradise”(i793), and “Jerusalem” (1804), reflect his ever-
deepening reflections about God and man. His interest in the
supernatural and his imaginative experimentation with his art and
verse classify him, like Robert Burns, as a pre-Romantic. Even
today scholars continue to puzzle over the complex philosophical
symbolism ofhis later works, but all readers can appreciate the
delicate lyricism o fh is “Songs o f Innocence” and “Songs o f
Experience”.
The short poem given below is from the volume “Songs of
Innocence”. The symbolic images o f rose and worm may make
you puzzle too:
The Sick Rose
О Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed
Ofcrimsonjoy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Romanticism in England
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