Page:William Blake, a critical essay (Swinburne).djvu/157

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WILLIAM BLAKE.
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of the "Garden of Love," which must here be read once again:—

I laid me down upon a bank
Where Love lay sleeping:
I heard among the rushes dank
Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,
To the thistles and thorns of the waste;
And they told me how they were beguiled,
Driven out, and compelled to be chaste."

The sharp and subtle change of metre here and at the end of the poem has an audacity of beauty and a justice of impulse proper only to the leaders of lyrical verse: unfit alike for definition and for imitation, if any copyist were to try his hand at it. The next song we transcribe from the "Ideas" is lighter in tone than usual, and admirable for humorous imagination; a light of laughter shines and sounds through the words.

THE WILL AND THE WAY.

I asked a thief to steal me a peach;
He turned up his eyes;
I asked a lithe lady to lie her down
Holy and meek, she cries.

As soon as I went
An angel came;
He winked at the thief
And smiled at the dame;

And without one word spoke
Had a peach from the tree;
And 'twixt earnest and joke
Enjoyed the lady."[1]

  1. Those who insist on the tight lacing of grammatical stays upon the "pained loveliness" of a muse's over-pliant body may use if they please Blake's own amended reading; in which otherwise the main salt of the poem is considerably