Classic and Contemporary Poetry
WILLIAM BLAKE, by JOHN ORLEY ALLEN TATE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Now william pulled the lever down Last Line: With a lot of psychoanalytic lust. Alternate Author Name(s): Tate, Allen Subject(s): Blake, William (1757-1827) | ||||||||
Now William pulled the lever down, And click-clack went the printing-press. William was the only printer in town Who had peeped while the angels undress. 'Damn this unmystical sweat,' quoth he, (He was longing for the New Jerusalem); 'Now in sketching an evil spirit -- let's see, Should the skirt of Lot's wife have a wide hem? And William had dudgeon for the sightless beadle Who worshipped a God like a grandmother on ice-skates, For William saw two angels on the point of a needle As nobody since except W. B. Yeats. He browsed in bathetic books -- John Boehme And Paracelsus -- which never mattered; But he mentions the Ohio River in a poem, So Americans ought to feel flattered. William Blake cursed the flesh for a clod, Yet of some of his sayings we Moderns have heard tell: 'The nakedness of woman is the work of God', Or that title -- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Now I don't believe William ever saw that ghost, Or even the universe in a fleck of dust; But maybe I'm blind, like a soul lost, With a lot of psychoanalytic lust. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MY FATHER'S FACE by HAYDEN CARRUTH NOVEMBER 23, 1989; AFTER BLAKE by NORMAN DUBIE IN THE OCTAGONAL ROOM by ANSELM HOLLO ARTIFACT: FIRST OF ALL, SEA; AND HALF OF THE SEA IS TRUTH, HALF WIND by ELENI SIKELIANOS TWO DICTA OF WILLIAM BLAKE: VARIATIONS by ROBERT DUNCAN BATTLE OF MURFREESBORO, 1862-1922 by JOHN ORLEY ALLEN TATE |
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