mirth. I feel that a man may be happy in this world, and I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision.[1] I see everything I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is far more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way.[2] Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.[3] As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers. You certainly mistake, when you say that the visions of fancy are not to be found in this world. To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil, and Milton in
- ↑ The nature of my work is visionary, or imaginative," Blake wrote, many years later, in A Vision of the Last Judgment (see Gilchrist, 1880, vol. ii. p. 186).
- ↑ A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees" (Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell).
- ↑ The significance of these words is accurately defined by a sentence referring to the prophetical books in Dr. Rudolf Kassner's brilliant essay on Blake: "Die Worte des Dichters können nicht nur das bedeuten, was er mit ihnen sagen will, sondern sie sind es auch."
