She sat with dead cold limbs, stiffen'd to stone; 69
She took the gory head up in her arms;
She kiss'd the pale lips; she had no tears to shed;
She hugg'd it to her breast, and groan'd her last.
In one of his epigrams on Hayley (MS. Book, Ixxviii). Blake's use of 'bereave' as a transitive verb is perhaps imitative of the line quoted by him, from Chaucer, in his Descriptive Catalogue:
'Hath me bireft my beauty and my pith.'
Song
How sweet I roam'd from field to field 1
And tasted all the summer's pride,
'Till I the prince of love beheld
Who in the sunny beams did glide!
He shew'd me lilies for my hair, 5
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his gardens fair
Where all his golden pleasures grow.
With sweet May dews my wings were wet, 9
And Phoebus fir'd my vocal rage;
He caught me in his silken net.
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing, 13
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.
Poetical Sketches, p. 10. According to Malkin (pp. xxxiv, xxxvi), who quotes this poem, it was written by Blake before the age of fourteen. 12 golden cage] Cp. Island in the Moon (c. 1785) iii:
'Come & be cured of all your pains
In Matrimony's Golden cage.'
