Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/267

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OF WILLIAM BLAKE.
255

artist's political visions of the future, but is wholly inexplicable. It appears to be in verse, and these are the first four lines:—

I wrap my turban of thick clouds around my laboring head,

And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs;

Yet the red Sun and Moon,

And all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains.

[This passage and the preceding are written by Crabb Robinson on the same old letter that contains the prose passages already referred to. Transcripts of Holy Thursday and the Introduction do not exist among the Crabb Robinson papers, but the other poems quoted in this paper exist in his autograph, together with copies of fourteen of Blake's other poems drawn from the Poetical Sketches and the Songs, the Dedication from Blair's Grave, and the Poison Tree.]

These Prophecies, like the Songs, appear never to have come within the ken of the wider public.

We have now given an account of all the works of this extrordinary man that have come under our notice. We have been lengthy, but our object is to draw the attention of Germany to a man in whom all the elements of greatness are unquestionably to be found, even though those elements are disproportionately mingled. Closer research than was permitted us would perhaps shew that as an artist Blake will never produce consummate and immortal work, as a poet flawless poems; but this assuredly cannot lessen the interest which all men, Germans