Excerpts from Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Excerpts from Blake related to love, beauty, or other human impulses:

From Annotations to Swedenborg, 1788

If a thing loves, it is infinite.

From Songs of Experience, 1789-94

Children of the future Age / Reading this indignant page, / Know that in a former time / Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.

From the Notebook, 1800-03

When a Man has Married a Wife he finds out whether / Her Knees & elbows are only glued together

From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-93
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, / Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him, knows you.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
Damn braces: Bless relaxes.
Exuberance is Beauty.
Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
The voice of honest indignation is the voice of God.
Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.

For the complete version of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, including Blake's engravings, see http://www.gailgastfield.com/mhh/mhh.html.

London

from Songs of Experience (1794)
















I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

Marriage of heaven and hell (excerpts)

Marriage

Infant joy

from Songs of Innocence (1789)


"I have no name;
I am but two days old."
What shall I call thee?
"I happy am,
Joy is my name."
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet Joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while;
Sweet joy befall thee!

Infant sorrow

from Songs of Experience (1794)













My mother groaned, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my father's hands,
Striving against my swaddling bands,
Bound and weary, I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast.

The tyger

from Songs of Experience (1794)














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, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & 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 sick rose

from Songs of Experience (1794)










O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.