Blake



One of my all-time favourite poets (and used to interesting effect with Johnny Depp in Jim Jarmusch's gorgeous Dead Man). While searching the web for good poetry sites I found this archive of William Blake poetry partially run by the Library of Congress. As well as the poems it has his illustrations, etchings and a searchable hypermedia engine for locating phrases, poems and imagery. Now you can read some without even going to your bookstore or library, so what's stopping you?

Once a dream did weave a shade

O'er my angel-guarded bed,

That an emmet lost its way

Where on grass methought I lay.

Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,

Dark, benighted, travel-worn,

Over many a tangled spray,

All heart-broke, I heard her say:

'O my children! do they cry,

Do they hear their father sigh?

Now they look abroad to see,

Now return and weep for me.'

Pitying, I dropped a tear:

But I saw a glow-worm near,

Who replied, 'What wailing wight

Calls the watchman of the night?'

'I am set to light the ground,

While the beetle goes his round:

Follow now the beetle's hum;

Little wanderer, hie thee home.

A Dream, William Blake

Tyger, tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And, when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger, tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The Tyger, William Blake