Her whole Life is an Epigram, smack-smooth & nobly pen'd
1st reading:[1] edit
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Her whole Life is an Epigram, smack-smooth & nobly pen'd,
Platted quite neat to catch applause with a sliding noose at the end.
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2nd reading: [2] edit
* * *
Her whole Life is an Epigram smack smooth & nobly pend
Platted quite neat to catch applause with a sliding noose at the end[3]
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- ↑ "Blake Complete Writings", ed. Geoffrey Keynes, pub. OUP 1966/85, p. 184.
- ↑ "The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake", ed. by David V. Erdman, Anchor Books, 1988, p. 516.
- ↑ "Her whole Life is an Epigram smack smooth & nobly pend..." N 100 rev
Erdman includes this into the VI-th section of the book: [SATIRIC VERSES AND EPIGRAMS]
Date of this epigram is uncertain. Erdman suggested it could be written in 1826 in a response to Wordsworth's poem of “A perfect Woman, nobly planned”.
1 smack smooth] colloq for “perfectly smooth, level, or even with the surface”—here applying to “Epigram” and, secondarily, to “pend”
nobly] begun as nea but then mended (avoiding anticipation of “neat” in the next line)
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse