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Morton Marcus: Good evening everybody this is Mort Marcus and tonight's show is by a man who said: And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green: and was the holy Lamb of God, on England's

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pleasant pastures seen! And did the Countenance Divine, shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded there, among these dark Satanic Mills?

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Bring me my Bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear, oh, clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire. I will not cease from Mental Fight, nor shall my sword sleep

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in my hand till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land. Those strident lines were written by the subject of tonight's show, William Blake, who was born November 28th,

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1757, that is two hundred and almost fifty years from yesterday, and today we're going to do a birthday program on William Blake, who was born in 1757 and died in 1827, in fact, on August 12th. He was born in London, did not receive much of

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an education, received most of his education in painting and actually attended the Royal Academy for a little while, but was then sent as an apprentice to a print shop and engraver and for the rest of his life, he was an engraver, made his money as

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an engraver. Though there were various different things that happen to him, I'm not really going to go into it. He did live a fairly uneventful life most of the time in London where he lived in complete obscurity towards the end of his life in

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the early 19th century. He did have a cult following surrounding him of young painters and was really recognized for his amazing engravings and artwork, but his poetry really went undiscovered for another forty years or so.

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And since that time, his reputation has grown to the point where he certainly is considered one of the handful of great English poets and one of the great visionaries and prophets of the Western world. In fact, in the 20th century, he

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has been compared over and over again to Leonardo da Vinci and his vision in his visual work, and certainly in his poetic work. He is, as far as I am concerned, a very misunderstood poet. And

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what I want to bring out tonight is some of the basic vision that he had- it is a philosophy but I think it is more a vision. We are in the grip here of a visionary poet, who has seen many, many things that are wrong with the world, but he's seeing

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them in a huge cosmic context. Let me just go back to the poem I'd read you and give you some idea of what's going on. This is the, almost you could say the prologue to Milton, a poem in two books, which was supposed to be in twelve books, one of his

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great long-line visionary poems. Very few people really read his visionary poems. They read one of two books, which are really, as we'll discover, one book called, "Songs of Innocence," and, "Songs of Experience," but that's really what we know most

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of his work from. But a great deal of his time was spent on a series of long visionary works, the last one called, "Jerusalem," running well over a hundred pages. They're long line poems also, he broke the metrical system in which he was

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born. But let me go back, as I said to this poem that I just read, and say a few words about it, it really has the hints in it of what he's all about. He first recalls almost nostalgically an

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England, which was full of harmony, full of innocence, full of wonder and sensual delight. "And did these feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green: and was the holy Lamb of God on England's

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pleasant pastures seen!" And what he means by that, he goes back to a language that Joseph of Arimathea, and Jesus once walked in England. And he's wondering, could it be that in England, actually, we were

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blessed with a divine presence and the divine presence was England itself. And he goes on to say: "And did the Countenance Divine shine forth upon our clouded hills?"

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That again is the Lamb of God or Jesus, and was Jerusalem builded here, and then suddenly, the turn: "Among these dark Satanic Mills." Now, what you have in England are dark Satanic Mills, the work

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of the devil. Mills in two senses: one, the coming of the Industrial Revolution, the the stink, and the soot of the factories in the city, especially where he lived in London; but two, the idea of a mill being an endless circle,

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that you are treading in to crush the grain into flour. And that is the way he is symbolically using this and we'll get back to being on this endless treadmill that he sees us condemned to, or let me amend that, that he sees us condemning

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ourselves to, and I'll go into that difference in meaning in a second. And suddenly, he becomes the person who is about to undertake the fight against these Satanic Mills, and bring back the world of wonder, innocence, and sensuality. As he

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"Bring me my Bow of burning gold bring me my arrows of desire says: bring me my spear, oh, cloud unfold! Bring me my chariot o fire, the cleansing chariot o cleansing fire. I will not ceas

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from Mental Fight Notice he is not talking here about physical revolt, this is very, very important. He is talking about a mental fight, he is talking about a change of attitude.

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"I will not cease from Mental Fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land." Once more, I add those two words to that. You have to understand

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the England that Blake was living in. And I'm going to oversimplify this tremendously because this is a radio show and it is reaching a number of people out there and there's no reason to get as complex as one can here. Simply, Blake born in

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the middle of the 19th of the 18th century, was a product of the Age of Reason. It was felt both in philosophical schools and in social tracks that the world's problems could be ended by a reason, by the use of organization that was given to

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us by the rational mind. And most of the writing that was done in the 19th century talked about this. And the end result of this idea of reorganization through reason was first the American Revolution and then the French Revolution, which had by

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the turn of the century, at least, France, not in the United States taken on horrific terms, as far as a lot of the early supporters were concerned because France had launched a whole series of wars in Europe, and also, of course, had turned

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to internal violence just it seemed to people from the outside, just destroying lives, piecemeal, and seemed to be totally out of control. Blake seeing that and being of a religious and visionary turn of

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mind, began to see a different sense of things. And what he saw was that the reason or the rational mind began to imprison us. It didn't allow us to see the intuitive or creative side of our existence. And what he finally calls for is an act of

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imagination and imagination becomes the great revolutionary tool. It is inside us. It is not something that moves out to destroy others. But remember, I will not cease from mental fight. It is the attempt to change our attitudes, which more

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and more have been bound by reason, have been put in the jail of reason, as he was concerned, that began to occupy him and his work more and more. There was a strong social sense of this, the social organizations and the economic

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organizations that are now beginning to assume awesome power, i.e. the industrialist, the Industrial Revolution, the whole new merchant class. He felt really was through this application of reason, really shutting down the freedoms of

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the people. And this is in particular, to what was happening to children and child labor. This really affected him enormously, and affected his thought enormously, and as you'll see, affected his poetry enormously. I should say that,

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to him, God was not God, the Father who sat on high and created the world. God was man, God was a man who was and has within him and when I say man, I mean humankind, has within him/her a divine spark which is totally human and that is:

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reason, the rational, but it is also the intuitive, it is also the creative, it is also the emotional, it is also the sensual and sensuous, and it is all combined in the idea of the imagination.

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So, let us go to his most popular works, and comment about them in ways that you may not have thought about them before. And what maybe we will be doing here, very simply is showing you a different way into his work, you can at bookstores now find a

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William Blake's original manuscripts for, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience." And what you see is that every poem is illustrated and in color. And the only way to understand Blake is to understand that the poems are

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working off the illustrations and vice versa. It is very interesting, therefore, to take his most famous poem, "The Tyger," and look at it in the context of the book, "Songs of Experience," because the tiger in, "Songs of Experience," is

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really a toy tiger, a doll tiger with looks like no teeth whatsoever, just all padded, all a Christmas gift for three or four year old child but the poem is strident and ferocious. So, you have the poems working off each other. And this continuous

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idea of opposites or contraries, continually invades his work. And the way to understand this most popular of all of his books of poems, is to understand that the, "Songs of Innocence," and the, "Songs of Experience," are really one work. And that if you

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read them, you see that in the, "Songs of Experience," there are matching poems, in the songs of exist- pardon me. In the, "Songs of Innocence," there are matching poems in, "Songs of Experience," and obviously vice versa. The, "Songs of

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Innocence," seem almost namby-pamby, almost like Hallmark greeting cards. And they certainly are pastoral in effect, they really occupy those innocent poems of shepherds and shepherdesses and little children who are gambling with

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lambs in the country. So, let me read some of these to you, but I want to read them in duet that is, I want to read the poem from the, "Songs of Innocence," and follow it with its matching poem from the, "Songs of Experience." All right. Let us start with the

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introduction to both books, which as I said, is really one book. And here is the INTRODUCTION to SONGS OF INNOCENCE, and it is a very, very innocent pastoral.

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Piping down the valleys wild, piping songs of pleasant glee, on a cloud, I saw a child, and he laughingly said to me: "Pipe a song about a lamb!" So I piped with merry cheer. "Piper, pipe that song again." So I piped, he wept to hear. "Drop thy pipe,

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thy happy pipe. Sing thy songs of happy cheer!" So I sung the same again, while he wept with joy to hear. "Piper, sit thee down and write in a book that all may read." So he vanished from my sight, and I plucked a hollow reed. And I made a rural

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pen, and I stained the water clear, and I wrote my happy songs every child may joy to hear. Now that sing-song rhythm and rhyme that he has picked up here, he is really moving out of the main models for poetic

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speech of the 18th century, which were by and large, iambic pentameter, heroic couplets and those couplets were very satirical. He has now gone back to the Elizabethans and the songs that were popular during Elizabethan times in this,

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"Songs of Innocence." So that's why they sound the way that they do, but they're very deceptive because they're full of irony. Okay, that was the introduction to, "Songs of Innocence." And that is the idea of the Piper or the shepherd, having a little

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child from a cloud, obviously, a Cupid figure, telling him to sing these wonderful songs of innocence and write a book of them and that is the, "Songs of Innocence." But here is the introduction to, "Songs of Experience." When suddenly, the

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person talking is not an innocent piping Shepherd, but he is a full-grown Bard, and the voice, the tone, the metrics are completely different. Introduction to SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

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Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, and Future sees, whose ears have heard the Holy Word that walked among the ancient trees. Calling the lapsed Soul, and weeping in the evening dew, that might control the starry pole, and fallen,

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fallen light renew! Oh Earth, oh Earth, return! Arise from out the dewy grass! Night is worn, and the morn rises from the slumberous mass. "Turn away no more, why wilt thou turn away? The starry floor, the watery shore, is given thee till the

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break of day." It's a completely different tone. And there seems to be a problem with the Bard who is talking about a much darker world. This difference can most clearly be seen and let us just

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go to it right now with two central poems from both books. The angel on the cloud had asked the Piper to sing a song about a lamb. And the fourth poem in, "Songs of Experience," is, "The Lamb," but look what the lamb is going to be matched with in,

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"Songs of Experience." Here is: THE LAMB from SONGS OF INNOCENCE Little lamb, who made thee? Does thou know who made thee, gave thee life, and bid thee feed by the stream and o'er the mead.

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Gave thee clothing of delight, softest clothing, woolly, bright, gave these such a tender voice, making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, who made thee? Does thou know who made thee? Little lamb, I'll tell thee. Little lamb, I'll tell

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thee. He is called by thy name, for He calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek and He is mild, He became a little child. I a child and thou a lamb, we are called by His name. Little lamb, God bless thee! Little lamb, God bless thee!

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And that question and answer from the innocent Shepherd as he sings his song and writes it with the clear waters of the country is, of course, the fact that God made the little lamb, and that the lamb, of course, is symbolic of Christ and the flock

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that is in Christ's protection. But that poem is matched in style again with the question, "Who made thee?" by probably Blake's most popular poem, one of the great lyrics in the English language, which is, "The TYger." And that when you see

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that these are matched really gives the sense of these contraries: the innocent life the life of joy, the life of joyous, merciful, God is now turned around, in, "Songs of Experience," in:

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THE TYGER 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

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wings dare he aspire? What the hand there 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

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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

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bright in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry? Well, the answer, of course, is, it's the same God, because the God who made the lamb made the tiger, but it must be a

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different God. It is not a God who makes something so innocent, so delightful, so woolly, and pardon me, cuddly. It is a God who is ferocious and vengeful, it is a God of violence. And if you want to extend this even more, God of innocence, God of

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evil, what is the answer? The answer is both answers are correct. The, "Songs of Innocence," our early life, are replaced by the, "Songs of Experience," and that experience, our experience in the world, more and more, makes

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us weary, depresses us, and destroys all of the earthly joy that we had. This is the contraries that Blake is talking about. And as the program goes on, we will see his answer to this. Let me read some other poems from this matching group,

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not all the poems match, but when they do, it is very obvious they match because in many cases you have how shall I say, poems that have the exact same name in both books. And sometimes they're just slightly different from each other, but a lot of

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the time they are the same. So, let me go to from, "The Lamb," to the next one in the order, which is the chimney sweeper and here is: THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER in SONGS OF INNOCENCE, and though it starts

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as a sad song, notice what happens. When my mother died I was very young, and my father sold me while yet my tongue could scarcely cry, "Weep! weep! weep! weep!" So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep. There's

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little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, that curl like a lamb's back, was shaved. So I said, "Hush, Tom! Never mind it, for, when your head's bare, you know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." And so he was quiet and that very night, as

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Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight. The thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an angel, who had a bright key, and he opened the coffins, and set them all free. Then down a

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green plaain, leaping, laughing, they run and wash in a river, and shine in the sun. Then naked and white, all their bags they left behind, they rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind. And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, he'd have God for

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his father, and never want joy. And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark, and got with our bags and our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm. So, if all do their duty, they need not fear arm.

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So we start off with a story about a young boy whose mother dies when he's young. And he when he was so young, he could hardly speak, his father sells him to a person who runs a chimney-sweep business, and he's been sweeping chimneys ever

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since. And he tells the story of little Tom Dacre who he says, cheer up. Just remember, if you're really feeling terrible, and you're crying, if your head is shaved, well, that's fine, because you won't have the soot spoil your white hair. And then

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I'm Tom Dacre goes to sleep and he has a dream that all of the chimney sweeps are freed and from these black coffins of their work, which could say the chimneys, and they run to the river again, this rural scene and they wash themselves clean.

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And finally, he is told that if he is a good boy, and he keeps doing his job and keeps his mouth shut, if he will, God will be his father, and he doesn't have to worry about the father that sold him, and he will always have joy. And so when he

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wakes up, he and the speaker, go off, and live a life of expectancy, but a life in which they can take their horrors with joy. Well, that's very interesting and it just tells us to keep our place, and not to make waves and not to complain

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about our lot in this life. This is answered, however, by a poem in, "Songs of Experience," also called: THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER, which reads like this: A little black thing among the snow, crying! "Weep! weep!" in

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notes of woe. "Where are thy father and mother? Say!" "They are both gone up to church to pray. Because I was happy upon the heath, and smiled among the winter's snow, they clothed me in the clothes of death, and taught me to sing the notes of

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woe. And because I am happy and dance and sing, they think they have done me no injury, and are gone to praise God and His priest and king, who made up a heaven of our misery." In this one, the speaker is not happy at all. And his mother and

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father have gone to church to pray to the priests, the king, and God, and they just have made his life a misery, and have sold him into the chimney sweep business even though he was happy playing upon the heath of the rural world. Notice that

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Blake is also playing the rural world against the urban world of the factory. Let us go on. This is a poem called: A LITTLE BOY LOST "Father, father, where are you going? Oh, do not walk so fast!

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Speak, father, speak to your little boy, or else I shall be lost." The night was dark, no father was there, the child was wet with dew. The mire was deep, and the child did weep, and away the vapor flew.

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And that's followed by: A LITTLE BOY FOUND The little boy lost in the lonely fen, led by the wandering light, began to cry, but God, ever nigh, appeared like his

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father, in white. He kissed the child, and by the hand led, and to his mother brought, who in sorrow pale, through the lonely dale, her little boy weeping sought. So you've got two poems that really are one about a boy who

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was lost and then is found thanks to God, saving him. This is matched by a poem called: THE LITTLE GIRL LOST In futurity and prophetic sea that the Earth from sleep (grave

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the sentence deep) shall arise and seek for her Maker meek. And the desert wild become a garden mild. In the southern clime, where the summer's prime never fades away, lovely Lyca lay. Seven summers old, lovely Lyca told. She had wandered long,

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hearing wild birds' song. "Sweet sleep, come to me, underneath this tree. Do father, mother, weep? Where can Lyca sleep? Lost in desert wild is your little child. How can Lyca sleep if her mother weep? If her heart does ache, then let Lyca wake. If my

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mother sleep, Lyca shall not weep. Frowning, frowning night, o'er this desert bright let thy moon arise, while I close my eyes." Sleeping Lyca lay, while the beasts of prey come from caverns deep, viewed the maid asleep. The kingly lions stood,

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in the virgin viewed: then he gambolled around o'er the hallowed ground. Leopards, tigers, play around her as she lay. While the lion old bowed his mane of gold, and her bosom lick, and upon her neck, from his eyes of flame, ruby tears

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are came. While the lioness loosed her slender dress, and naked they covered, they conveyed to caves the sleeping maid. And then:

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THE SLEEPING GIRL FOUND All the night in woe Lyca's parents go over the valleys deep, while the deserts weep. Tired and woe-begone. Hoarse with making moan, arm in arm, seven days they traced the

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desert ways. Seven nights they sleep among the shadows deep, and dream they see their child starved in desert wild. Pale through pathless ways of fancied image strays, famished, weeping, weak, with hollow piteous shriek. Rising from unrest, the

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trembling woman pressed with feet of weary woe. She could no further go. In his arms he bore her, armed with sorrow sore. Till before their way a couching lion lay. Turning back was vain. Soon his heavy mane bore them to the ground, then he stalked

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around, smelling to his prey. But their fears allay when he licks their hands, and silent by them stands. They look upon his eyes filled with deep surprise, and wondering behold a spirit armed in gold. On his head a crown, on his shoulders down

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flowed his golden hair. Gone was all their care. "Follow me," he said. "Weep not for the maid. In my palace deep, Lyca lies asleep." Then they followed where the vision lead, and saw their sleeping child among the tigers wild. To this day they

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dwell in a lonely dell, nor fear the wolvish howl nor the lion's growl. And that is really a happy ending because they have become one with the animals and are once more existing in the rural

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land. This has been a birthday program which we will continue on William Blake who was born November 28th, 1757. We will be back after a short musical interlude. The announcements for this week are as follows: this Tuesday,

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December 1st at 8pm at the Bookshop Santa Cruz, Poet in Transit, a memorial reading for Greg Keith. Amber Coverdale Sumrall, Susan Borden Keith, Greg's widow, Maude Meehan, Steven Meadows, and yours truly will be reading and talking

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about Greg Keith, the poet who died all too young, was born in 1945 and died this last June. And I would hope as many people could get there as they could. Greg's Selected Poems have come out. It's a beautiful book with a wonderful CD and some of you

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may remember the show he did this summer. Both his widow on yours truly, had read some of his poems then and this is really an extraordinary poet and a wonderful man and I just hope that you'll come and hear that reading, Poet in Transit. The

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memorial reading for Greg Keith is Tuesday, the 1st at 8pm. This Friday night at the Holy Cross Church on the hill in Santa Cruz, there is the third annual tribute to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the great 17th century Mexican nun, who is one of the

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great intellects of the Western world, as well as one of the great poets and the readers will be the great Gary Soto who's coming down especially to be part of this reading. Francisco X. Alarcon, who, of course, teaches at UC Davis and for many

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years was a marvelous member of the community here in Santa Cruz, Claire Braz Valentine, and Gabriella Guiterrez, and again, yours truly. And on the same night, so you have two things to choose from, there is the poetry reading entitled An Evening of

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Autobiography at Louden Nelson community center that is in downtown Santa Cruz also. As many of you know, the featured readers will be Louise Beagle, Clarence Willesden, Eton white, Elizabeth Moonrose, Suzanne Harding, Arden Peters, Jack

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Sentieti(?), and Melissa Queen, and that is at Louden Nelson Center, 301 Center Street. The Holy Cross Church, by the way, where the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz reading is taking place is at 126 High Street in Santa Cruz. So, all these readings in

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Santa Cruz certainly try to make it. We are talking tonight about William Blake, the great English poet, and visionary. And I was showing the matching poems that go on in, "Songs of Experience." And what I would like to do for the rest of this program is to

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read just some of the great poems that are in here and maybe talk about them in the terms that I talked about in the beginning of the show, that is, that life is made up of contraries: innocence versus experience, reason versus

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intuition, and this is the important one. And Blake sort of reverses things. To him, divine energy, or Satan, is the real power of the universe, of power, not of evil, really, but of imaginative energy which makes our life complete, which makes

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the human being complete. And when we limit ourselves to reason alone, we are imprisoning ourselves. And he calls his God the God who made heaven and earth and therefore destroyed the eternal world, Urizen, which has always seemed to me to be a

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play on the word horizon, you have a horizon, a limitation. But let me read you some of the other great poems from, "Songs of Experience." You already know, "The Tiger." And let me read some of these others. Here is, "The Sick Rose," and look at

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the sick rose as having sort of denied her own sexuality. This is a very sexual poem, and I think it will probably strike you that way because of the nature of the imagery, the worm is certainly phallic and notice the heart of the rose, just

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visually speaking. I also think that, by the way, Blake was a great psychological artist, he could really see how people's minds work, but they all those minds worked according to his vision of the universe. So, here is:

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THE SICK ROSE Oh 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.

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So the rose which would have been the beautiful blossom, of the, "Songs of Innocence," now becomes a very suppressed flower, suppressed woman who in her secret self has suppressed her sexuality in the world of experience, and the worm,

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therefore, is the male counterpart to that who has come in the howling storm almost in an act of violence, and has invaded her privacy, if you will, and has destroyed her. And it is interesting that in both cases, the balance of the

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secretiveness and suppression of the woman calls for the opposite reaction of the male. Here's an innocent poem called: THE FLY, with a very interesting argument, and certainly does remind one of John Donne and his love songs.

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Little Fly, thy summer's play my thoughtless hand has brushed away. Am not I a fly like thee? Or art not thou a man like me? For I dance, and drink, and sing, till some blind hand shall brush my wing. If thought is life and strength and breath,

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and the want of thought is death, then am I a happy fly. If I live, or if I die. And there is the question: what is the difference between life forms and am I happier being alive than dead? Am I happier

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having strength, and breath, and thought? And several poems later on is, "The Tiger." Here's the sunflower. Now, this is a beautiful poem, and a beautiful rhythm is set up here, a beautiful model, but I want- Well, we'll go over it. First

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let me read it, and then I will interpret it for you. It's called: AH, SUNFLOWER, and again, it's one of his famous poems. Ah, sunflower, weary of time, who countest the steps of the

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sun, seeking after that sweet golden clime where the traveler's journey is done. Where the Youth pined away with desire, and the pale virgin shrouded in snow, arise from their graves, and aspire where my sunflower wishes to go!

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Now, that's a very interesting poem. Here we have a very keenly observed movement of the sunflowers, it traces the sun around the heaven, but every day it does the same thing. It is bound to its place, and it becomes emblematic of the human

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generations, as we are bound to our lively existence of youth, maturity, death, old age and death. So the youth therefore, like the sunflower, you see, pines away with desire and the virgin then gets shrouded with snow. This is again the, "Songs

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of Experience." It's not the innocent laughter and dancing in the rural world. And they want to go where the sunflower aspires to go, but never goes, they are bound to the world. Let me read it again. And that's why they're weary of time because

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time is this world of growth, of birth, growth, and death. Ah, Sun-flower! Wary of time, who countest the steps of the sun, seeking after that sweet golden clime, where the traveler's journey is done. Where the youth pined away with

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desire, and the pale virgin shrouded in snow, arise from their graves, and aspire where am I sunflower wishes to go! And let me finish with two of these poems, and then read what I consider to be one of Blake's greatest lyrical poems that

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hardly anyone reads because it's buried in a manuscript called, "The Pickering Manuscript," that has been in private hands for more than a hundred and fifty years. And this is on London, his picture of how we are imprisoned in the cities we

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make, the cities that are our mental prisons, but also it is a social poem at the same time of what we do to the workers and what we do to the children, and it is of course, also one of his great poems, "London." And notice how the word charted here

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though it is also the word for mapping is here this idea of bounding things, imprisoning them. LONDON I wander through each charted street, near where the chartered

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Thames does flow, a 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-forged manacles I hear: how the chimney-sweeper's cry every

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blackening church appalls, and the hapless soldier's sigh runs in blood down palace-walls. But most, through midnight streets I hear how the youthful harlot's curse blasts the newborn infant's tear, and blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

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And notice that marriage is a hearse there. It is not a freedom, it is a further binding. Notice the infant tears, notice the youthful harlot, her curse, is a blast on the newborn and makes it well because that is what the infant

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is going to be born to. Notice that in every voice, in every band, the mind forged manacles, I hear these manacles, this repression is in one's mind. And the great revolution that Blake will find is in our imaginative powers to deny this element of

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the world, this orderliness of the world, this rationalizing of each aspect of existence and joining all the aspects of ourselves: our intuition, our reason, our sensuality, and mostly our imagination, into the totally unified infinite sense

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of the person, we can become male or female. And finally, the last songs of the, "Song of Innocence." And, oh, it's not the last song but it's one of them. A matching one again to show you what I'm talking about, here is, "Infant Joy," from,

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"Songs of Innocence," two very short poems: INFANT JOY from SONGS OF INNOCENCE "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!

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Pretty joy, sweet joy, but two days old. Sweet joy I call thee: thou does smile, I sing the while. Sweet joy befall thee! And that is the shepherd talking to the newborn child and entering him into a wonderful innocence, a wonderful life. But

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that is answered by the same title poem, "Infant Sorrow," in, "Songs of Experience." INFANT SORROW My mother groaned, my father wept: into the dangerous world I

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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.

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And notice, in this case, "helpless, naked, piping loud, like a fiend hid in a cloud." And we go back to that introduction in which we had the child in the cloud, the angel in the cloud, and now it has finally become in, "Songs Of

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Experience," "the fiend hid in the cloud," as everything turns around the poem that I want to read you, which I think is one of the great lyrical poems, though it is a narrative, it is a stunning narrative of how this all works. And it is called, "A

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Mental Traveler," and it is again in the rhythm and the metrics and the rhyme scheme of the English ballad. And it is ballad because it is a story as many of the poems I read you are. And this is called, "A Mental Traveller," and this

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talks about the imprisonment and how it happens in generations, and how we go through this endless round and what I want you to notice is the male element on one hand and the female element on the other and how they relate to each other

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and change so that you've got an emblematic male figure as a child, as a youth, as a mature person, then as an old man. And you have got a woman, as a girl, as a young girl, a young woman, a mature woman, and finally an old woman, in fact, that's where

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we start off. And notice this unbelievable creation of Blake's, which is buried in the "Pickering Manuscript," which has been in private hands for more than a century and a half. THE MENTAL TRAVELLER

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I travelled through a land of men, a land of men and women too, and heard and saw such dreadful things as cold earth-wanders never knew. For there the babe is born in joy that was begotten in dire

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woe. Just as we reap in joy the fruit, which we in bitter tears did sow. And if the babe is born a boy he's given to a woman old, who nails him down upon a rock, and catches his shrieks and cups of

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gold. She binds iron thorns around his head, she pierces both his hands and feet, she cuts his heart out at his side, to make it feel both cold and heat.

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Her fingers number every nerve, just as a miser counts his gold. She lives upon his shrieks and cries, and she grows young as he grows old. Till he becomes a bleeding youth, and she becomes a virgin

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bright. Then he rends up his manacles, and binds her down for his delight. He plants himself in all her nerves, just as a husbandman his mold, and she becomes his dwelling-place and garden

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fruitful seventyfold. An aged shadow, soon as he fades, wandering round an earthly cot, full filled all with gems and gold which he by industry had got.

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And these are the gems of the human soul, the rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye, the countless gold of the aching heart, the martyr's groan and the lover's sigh. They are his meat, they are his drink. He feeds the beggar and

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the poor and the wayfaring traveler: forever open is his door. His grief is their eternal joy. They make the roofs and walls to ring, till from the fire on the hearth a little female babe does

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spring. And she is all of solid fire and gems and gold, that none his hand dares stretch to touch her baby form, or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

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But she comes to the man she loves, if young or old, or rich or poor. They soon drive out the aget host, a beggar at another's door. He wanders weeping far away, until some other take him in.

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Oft blind and age-bent, sore distrest, until he can a maiden win. And to allay his freezing age, the poor man takes her in his arms. The cottage fades before his sight, the garden in its

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lovely charms. The guests are scattered through the land, for the eye altering alters all. The senses roll themselves in fear, and the flat earth becomes a ball.

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The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away, a desert vast without a bound, and nothing left to eat or drink, at a dark desert all around. The honey of our infant lips, the bread and wine of her sweet

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smile, the wild game of a roving eye, does him to infancy beguile. For as he eats and drinks he grows younger and younger every day, and on the desert wild they both wander in terror and

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dismay. Like the wild stag, she flees away, her fear plants many a thicket wild. While he pursues her night and day, by various arts of love beguiled.

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By various arts of love and hate, till the wide desert planted over with labyrinths of wayward love where roam the lion, wolf, and boar. Till he becomes a wayward babe, and she a weeping woman old.

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Then many a lover wanders here, the sun and stars are nearer rolled. The trees bring forth sweet ecstasy to all who in the desert roam, till many a city there is built, and many a pleasant

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shepherd's home. But when they find the frowning babe, terror strikes through the region wide: they cry, "The babe! The babe is born!" and flee away on every side.

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For who dare touch the frowning form, his arm is withered to his root. Lions, boars, wolves, all howling flee, and every tree does shed its fruit. And none can touch that frowning form, except it be a woman old.

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She nails him down upon the rock, and all is done as I have told. And that is William Blake's I think- one of the greatest poems that he ever wrote, one of the great poems of the English

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language, "The Mental Traveler," look it up in the anthologies, they'll have to be rather extensive anthologies to find them. Let me end the show by reading some of these things. You may want to go on to read poems like, "Europe," certainly,

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"Milton," and finally, "Jerusalem." These are the great long prophetic poems by Blake. I would like to read some of, "The Auguries of Innocence," in which Blake would write these wonderful aphorisms. And this, of course, is a famous one. The

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first four lines of, "Auguries of Innocence," which goes on for over a hundred and fifty lines, is this. And I'm sure you have all heard this before, many of you know that Blake wrote it. If you didn't, you now do. And here is the great vision, here's the

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great power of the imagination that Blake wants to have people alter the world with, it again, is a mental revolution. And this is what he says: "To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild

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flower hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour." Now that is impossible, and it is impossible because we are using our rational mind. If we can see to that, and I'm going

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to read it again right now, we have made an imaginative leap beyond linear thinking because that's what we call it today. And this little four lines, which I think epitomizes, what Blake is trying to do, will be found in one way or another with

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the great Sufi thinkers, the great Taoists thinkers, Zen Buddhists, it is the way to the eternal in which our separation into different parts has taken us from a sense of ourselves as infinite beings. And I'll read it again.

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"To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour." Another way of saying that is what is the sound of one hand

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clapping? In the end, all mystics become one, ask the same questions, and have the same answers, and are looking at the same cosmos. What I want to make clear in Blake's case, however, is that he is not talking about the denial of this earth. He is

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talking about an acceptance at once, a holding in mutual tension, if you will, of the eternal, infinite spiritual world, on one hand, a world of the imagination and on the other, the world of the earth on which we live. So if you notice,

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I said what he considers the infinite human be is someone who employs reason, intuition, a sensuous delight in the world, and the imagination. And that's what anything you read in Blake will tell you. Just listen to how the "The Auguries of

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Innocencetiger" continues: "A Robin Red breast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage." Why? Because the Robin Red breast is in a cage and should not be. Anything bound, anything that is given boundaries, does

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not have the freedom necessary to become once more the infinite man. "A dove house filled with doves and pigeons, shudders hell through all its regions."

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Again, it's a dove house. These proverbs, if you will, which you can read in the, "Auguries of Innocence," are really marvelous but there is another long poem in which these proverbs are even a greater. And that is a poem, and just notice the title of it,

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one of his early long poems and one of the great satires of the Western world called, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." And in this poem, we have a mixture of both poetry and prose, very, very satirical stories about how we limit and

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destroy our lives, and in which the world of experience and the world of vision meet head on and one or the other does not win as such. The point is, they must hold each other in mutual tension, as I said, so I certainly would have you go to

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the proverbs in, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." And I would have you continue to read William Blake, and to look at him, I hope in a new way, from tonight's broadcast. This is Mort Marcus. Tonight we have been talking about William

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Blake, whose birthday was yesterday, November 28th. He was born in 1757 and died in 1827. A great visionary. Stay tuned for From the Bookshelf.