portrait of William Blake. Etching, 1808. William Blake Poems; Songs of Innocence and of Experience

British Museum

Luigi Schiavonetti (1765–1810), Frontispiece to Blair's ‘The Grave’: half-length portrait of 

William Blake. Etching, 1808.

The British Library

‘Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?’

For ‪#‎InternationalTigerDay‬, sketches of a tiger from the pages of William Blake’s notebook. http://bit.ly/29vIZqm

Everyman's Library

"A Divine Image" by William Blake

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

*

This is a selection of the poet's work, including all the great lyrics and the more important prophetic books. In her introduction the poet and critic expounds Blake's esoteric theory and shows how it helped to create a poetry which is unlike any other. The tigers that crouched in Blake's baleful spiritual forests, the roses and sunflowers whose mystical properties he rendered with such accurate music, the angels with whom he wrestled and who delivered prophetic books to him late at night, were literally more real to him than the London, where, in the period of the French Revolution, he lived out his life of poverty and indignant isolation. One of England's great lyric poets; one of Europe's great visionaries. Introduction by Kathleen Raine

2011.11.4

2010年的一則筆記

Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake

"《純真與經驗之歌》 ( Songs of Innocence and Experience ) 是浪漫時期英國詩人威廉 ‧ 布雷克 (William Blake, 1757-1827) 於 1794 年集結成冊的詩選。早在 1789 年《純真之歌》( Songs of Innocence )便率先出版問世，直到 1793 年布雷克陸續完成《經驗之歌》( Songs of Experiece ) 後，才於隔年正式將兩部分的詩合而為一，並加上副標題「揭露人類靈魂的兩個對立面」("showing the two contrary states of the human soul")。"

由於William Blake窮 結集之前， 有誰要買零的 ，都可印賣。

市面上有幾種漢文選譯

BBC Radio 4

"O Rose thou art sick."

William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience

BBC.IN

2012

Life of William Blake

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Life of William Blake, "Pictor Ignotus"
cover for the 1880 edition
Author(s)	Alexander Gilchrist
Cover artist	Frederic Shields
Country	England
Language	English
Subject(s)	William Blake
Genre(s)	biography
Publication date	1863; 1880

The Life of William Blake, “Pictor Ignotus.” With selections from his poems and other writings is a two volume work on the English painter and poet William Blake, first published in 1863. The first volume is a biography and the second a compilation of Blake's poetry, prose, artwork and illustrated manuscript.

The book was largely written by Alexander Gilchrist, who had spent many years compiling the material and interviewing Blake's surviving friends. However, Gilchrist had left it incomplete at his sudden death from scarlet fever in 1861. The work was published two years later, having been completed by his widow Anne Gilchrist with help from Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti.

The book became the first standard text on the Blake, a foundation of the extensive scholarship on his life and work.

The original 1863 edition was subtitled 'Pictor Ignotus', Latin for "unknown artist", a common phrase used for unattributed artworks. Here it refers to Blake's obscurity at the time. The phrase was taken from the recently published poem of that title by Robert Browning, part of which was used as an epigraph.^[1] A second edition was published in 1880, this included additional material and revisions to the earlier transcripts of Blake's work and Gilchrist's bibliographical details. Both are referred as Gilchrist's Blake or Life.

Several of Blake's short poems, such as 'The Tyger', were typeset during his lifetime and had become widely known since the author's death in 1827, having been reproduced in commonplace books by William Wordsworth and others; however, the larger corpus of his work remained in relative obscurity.

The second volume, edited and annotated by D. G. Rossetti, included most of Blake's songs, verse and other poetry, his prose, and letters. These were often the first publication in typeset. The editors sometimes adapted the works during transcription, printing 'Tyger' as 'Tiger' for the well known example, and largely excluded discussion and republication of the 'Prophetic Books'. The transcriptions included the Poetical Sketches(selections), the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the Book of Thel, and unpublished poetry from manuscript as "Ideas of Good and Evil". Prose works include the rare "Descriptive Catalogue", Blake's description of the paintings exhibited at his solo exhibition in 1809. It includes his analysis of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and an account of his panoramic depiction of the pilgrims leaving London.

The work reproduced many of Blake's illustrations from public and private collections, interspersed throughout the biography and series of plates from his illuminated books. Many of these were engraved by William James Linton. Other designs, commentary and the second edition's cover were provided by Frederic Shields.

Anne Gilchrist appended a memoir of her husband, Alexander, to the second volume.

A review by James Smetham of the first edition was included in the second as an "Essay on Blake". The biography of the second edition was expanded with Blake's letters, obtained in an 1878 sale at Sothebys.

[edit]Notes

1. ^ "The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward
   Vain tongues from where my pictures stand apart."
   "Pictor Ignotus," by Robert Browning. cited in Volume 1, 1863

[edit]References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Life of William Blake

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Life of William Blake

• Scholarly Commentary Life of William Blake, ‘Pictor Ignotus’ Rossetti archive. Collections
• Online transcript of the 1863 (first) edition of Gilchrist's Life of Blake

"A Cradle Song" by William Blake

Sweet dreams form a shade,
O'er my lovely infants head.
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,
By happy silent moony beams

Sweet sleep with soft down.
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles in the night,
Hover over my delight.
Sweet smiles Mothers smiles,
All the livelong night beguiles.

Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes,
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the dovelike moans beguiles.

Sleep sleep happy child,
All creation slept and smil'd.
Sleep sleep, happy sleep.
While o'er thee thy mother weep

Sweet babe in thy face,
Holy image I can trace.
Sweet babe once like thee.
Thy maker lay and wept for me

Wept for me for thee for all,
When he was an infant small.
Thou his image ever see.
Heavenly face that smiles on thee,

Smiles on thee on me on all,
Who became an infant small,
Infant smiles are His own smiles,
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles.

---2015
Today is the 258th anniversary of the birth of William Blake. He was born in London, England on this day in 1757.

"A Dream" by William Blake

Once a dream did weave a shade
O'er my angel-guarded bed,
That an emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.

Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:

'Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.'

Pitying, I dropped a tear:
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied, 'What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?

'I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle's hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home! '

*

Since its first publication in 1965, this edition has been widely hailed as the best available text of Blake's poetry and prose. Now revised, if includes up-to-date work on variants, chronology of poems and critical commentary by Harold Bloom.

詩與預言集

Everyman's Library

William Blake was born in Soho, London, England on this day in 1757.

"A Cradle Song" by William Blake

Sweet dreams form a shade,
O'er my lovely infants head.
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,
By happy silent moony beams

Sweet sleep with soft down.
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles in the night,
Hover over my delight.
Sweet smiles Mothers smiles,
All the livelong night beguiles.

Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes,
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the dovelike moans beguiles.

Sleep sleep happy child,
All creation slept and smil'd.
Sleep sleep, happy sleep.
While o'er thee thy mother weep

Sweet babe in thy face,
Holy image I can trace.
Sweet babe once like thee.
Thy maker lay and wept for me

Wept for me for thee for all,
When he was an infant small.
Thou his image ever see.
Heavenly face that smiles on thee,

Smiles on thee on me on all,
Who became an infant small,
Infant smiles are His own smiles,
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles.

*

This is a selection of the poet's work, including all the great lyrics and the more important prophetic books. In her introduction the poet and critic expounds Blake's esoteric theory and shows how it helped to create a poetry which is unlike any other. The tigers that crouched in Blake's baleful spiritual forests, the roses and sunflowers whose mystical properties he rendered with such accurate music, the angels with whom he wrestled and who delivered prophetic books to him late at night, were literally more real to him than the London, where, in the period of the French Revolution, he lived out his life of poverty and indignant isolation. One of England's great lyric poets; one of Europe's great visionaries.

*****
2014

William Blake, England's finest visionary, was born today in 1757. The great poet was a passionate dissident & a political artist deeply at odds with his country whose ideas were formed by the turbulent history of the time.

The Poet of Albion ： http://bbc.in/1vtc2m0

The Poet of Albion - BBC Radio 4 Extra

Jenny Uglow investigates the life of the radical London artist and poet William Blake.

BBC.IN