Poems

Alice Meynell's introduction to William Blake presents him as a poet of radiant genius and uncompromising vision, a figure whose language resists easy explanation yet burns with moral force, spiritual intensity, and startling clarity. She praises the luminous simplicity of his greatest lyrics, his association with light, and his power to remake morality, faith, and reality itself, while also offering a careful selection meant to represent Blake broadly. A brief life of the poet follows, tracing his early visions, artistic training, marriage to Catherine Boucher, prophetic career, years in London and Felpham, and the fierce temperament that shaped both his art and his life, ending with a tribute to his lasting legacy. The poems themselves move from the seasonal and celestial beauty of Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Morning, and Evening Star into love songs, grief, memory, and imaginative freedom. They deepen into darker contrasts of harsh winter, captivity, melancholy, and madness, then widen into pastoral play, mythic longing, and historical grandeur in works such as "Blind-Man's Buff," "To the Muses," "King Edward the Third," and The Black Prince. Blake's Songs of Innocence and related visionary lyrics unite tenderness with social protest, celebrating childhood, nature, and divine compassion while exposing the suffering of chimney sweeps, lost children, and the poor. Across the collection, innocence and experience, pity and injustice, hope and desolation are held in luminous, unforgettable balance. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.