Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
II.
Struggling in my father's hands,
Striving against my swaddling bands,
Bound and weary, I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast.
III.
When I saw that rage was vain
And to sulk would nothing gain,
Twining many a trick and wile
I began to soothe and smile.
IV.
And I grew[1] day after day,
Till upon the ground I lay;
And I grew[1] night after night,
Seeking only for delight.
V.
And I saw before me shine
Clusters of the wandering vine;
And many a lovely flower and tree
Stretched their blossoms out to me.
VI.
But many a priest[2] with holy look,
In their hands a holy book,
Pronouncèd curses on his head
Who the fruit or blossoms shed.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Other readings are "soothed" and "smiled"—readings adopted after the insertion of the preceding stanza. As the subject is a child not yet grown to standing and walking age, these readings are perhaps better, though less simple in sound, than the one I have retained.
- ↑ Here and throughout to the end, duly altering metre and grammar with a quite laudable care, Blake has substituted "my father" for the "priests;" not I think to the improvement of the poem, though probably with an eye to making the end cohere rather more closely with the beginning. This and the "Myrtle" are shoots of the same stock, and differ only in the second grafting. In the last-named poem the father's office was originally thus;
Oft my myrtle sighed in vain
To behold my heavy chain:
Oft my father saw us sigh,
And laughed at our simplicity."
