Poems

Published by Vintage 2007

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Introduction and selection © Patti Smith 2007

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

The text of this edition follows the versions established by Geoffrey Keynes which keep William Blake’s own spellings and capitalisations.

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CONTENTS

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

About the Author

Introduction

From Poetical Sketches:
To the Evening Star

To Spring

To Summer

To Autumn

To Winter

To Morning

Song: How sweet I roam’d from field to field

Song: My silks and fine array

Mad Song

To the Muses

Song: Fresh from the dewy hill, the merry year

Song: Memory, hither come

from King Edward the Third

Prologue to King Edward the Fourth

Prologue to King John

A War Song to Englishmen

The Couch of Death

Contemplation

From The Pickering Manuscript:
The Smile

The Golden Net

The Mental Traveller

The Land of Dreams

Mary

The Crystal Cabinet

Auguries of Innocence

William Bond

From Blake’s Notebook:
The Birds

From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
A Memorable Fancy

from Proverbs of Hell

From Milton, a Poem in 2 Books:
from Preface

from Book the Second

From Jerusalem:
from Chapter 3

To the Christians

The Book of Ahania

From Vala, or The Four Zoas:
from Night the Ninth

All Religions are One

There is No Natural Religion

Songs of Innocence:
Introduction

The Shepherd

The Ecchoing Green

The Lamb

The Little Black Boy

The Blossom

The Chimney Sweeper

The Little Boy Lost

The Little Boy Found

Laughing Song

A Cradle Song

The Divine Image

Holy Thursday

Night

Spring

Nurse’s Song

Infant Joy

A Dream

On Another’s Sorrow

Songs of Experience:
Introduction

Earth’s Answer

The Clod & the Pebble

Holy Thursday

The Little Girl Lost

The Little Girl Found

The Chimney Sweeper

Nurse’s Song

The Sick Rose

The Fly

The Angel

The Tyger

My Pretty Rose Tree

Ah! Sun-flower

The Lilly

The Garden of Love

The Little Vagabond

London

The Human Abstract

Infant Sorrow

A Poison Tree

A Little Boy Lost

A Little Girl Lost

To Tirzah

The School Boy

The Voice of the Ancient Bard

A Divine Image

The Gates of Paradise

From the Letters of William Blake:
Letter to William Hayley, 6 May 1800

Letter to John Flaxman, 21 September 1800

from Letter to Thomas Butts, 10 January 1802

Letter to Thomas Butts, 25 April 1803

Letter to William Hayley, 7 October 1803

Letter to John Linnell, February 1827

Letter to John Linnell, 25 April 1827

Index of Titles

POEMS

William Blake was born in London on 28 November 1757. He was educated at home and then worked as an apprentice to the engraver James Basire before joining the Royal Academy in 1779. In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher. A year later he began his career as a poet when he published Poetical Sketches. These were followed by Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) which he also designed and engraved. His other major literary works include The Book of Thel (1789), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c.1793), Milton (1804–8) and Jerusalem (1804–20). He also produced many magnificent paintings and engravings during his lifetime. William Blake died on 12 August 1827.

Patti Smith is a writer, artist and performer. Her seminal album Horses was followed by ten releases, including Radio Ethiopia, Easter, Dream of Life, Gone Again, Trampin’ and, most recently, Twelve. Her artwork was first exhibited at Gotham Book Mart in 1973, and she has been associated with the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her books include Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea and Complete Lyrics. In 2005 she received the Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Patti Smith lives in New York City and is the mother of two children, Jackson and Jesse.

INTRODUCTION

The eternal loom spins the immaculate word. The word forms the pulp and sinew of innocence. A newborn cries as the cord is severed, seeming to extinguish memory of the miraculous.Thus we are condemned to stagger rootless upon the earth in search for our fingerprint on the cosmos.

William Blake never let go of the loom’s golden skein. The celestial source stayed bright within him, the casts of heaven moving freely in his sightline. He was the loom’s loom, spinning the fiber of revelation; offering songs of social injustice, the sexual potency of nature, and the blessedness of the lamb. The multiple aspects of woven love.

His angels entreat, drawing him through the natural aspects of their kingdom into the womb of prophecy. He dips his ladle into the spring of inspiration, the flux of creation.

A rough-hewn seer who never tasted but English air, who loved Michelangelo yet never saw Rome.

Laboring over his work in sleeves ink-stained, he transfigures London into the new Jerusalem. His crushed hat and threadbare coat seem to pulsate as he wends his way through the grimy clatter. He heads past dark factories where pubescent girls with hair of matted gold offer themselves in the shadows for a bit of bread. Later, through his swift fingers, they transform as the virgins of his glad day, languishing in the bath of absolution, readied to accept the seed of God.

He is a messenger and a god himself. Deliverer, receptacle and fount.

* * *

My mother gave me Blake. In a church bazaar she found Songs of Innocence, a lovely 1927 edition faithful to the original. I spent long hours deciphering the calligraphy and contemplating the illustrations entwined with the text. I was fascinated by the possibility that one creates both word and image as did Blake, with copperplate, linen and rag, walnut oils, a simple pencil.

My father helped me comprehend this childless man who seemed to me the ultimate friend of children, who bemoaned their fate as chimney sweeps, laborers in the mills, berating the exploitation of their innocence and beauty.

Through my life I have returned to him.

When Allen Ginsberg lay dying, I was among those who sat vigil by his bedside. I wandered into his library and randomly chose a book, a volume of Blake in blood-red binding. Each poem was deeply annotated in Allen’s hand, just as Blake had annotated Milton. I could imagine these prolific, complex men discoursing; the angels, mute, admiring.

William Blake felt that all men possessed visionary power. He cited from Numbers 11:29: ‘Would to God that all the Lord’s people were prophets.’ He did not jealously guard his vision; he shared it through his work and called upon us to animate the creative spirit within us.

Nature sits on her throne, and science cannot contain her, just as religion cannot contain God. Nature sees naught of good and evil; one eye art, the other science.

* * *

‘I wrote my happy songs, every child a joy to hear’

May we all listen as children as we enter his garden.

Here is a selection, a bit of Blake, designed as a bedside companion or to accompany a walk in the countryside, to sit beneath a shady tree and discover a portal into his visionary and musical experience.

There is in his song something of the Appalachian, whose ballads immigrated from British soil. Threnody played with a dark fiddle. They remind me that when I was young I thought Blake was American. Many might claim him now.

Although much of his work seems impenetrable he never ceased in his desire to connect with the populace. He has succeeded in offering both. He has been the spiritual ancestor of generations of poets and alchemical detectives seeking their way through the labyrinth of inhuman knowledge even as schoolchildren recite his verses. His proverbs have become common parlance.

Passages of prophecy have been chosen as a lure, in appreciation of his rich language without the mystical fetters of a difficult cosmology. Fragments of his letters give us a glimpse into the poles of his daily existence, the ecstatic bursts, the trials of laborious poverty.

To take on Blake is not to be alone.

Walk with him. William Blake writes ‘all is holy’.

That includes the book you are holding and the hand that holds it.

Patti Smith, 2007