WILLIAM BLAKE
"And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at church,
Would not have bandy children, nor fasting nor birch";
lines that have no sense at all and no connection with the poem whatever. There is a stronger and simpler case of contrast. There is the quiet and beautiful stanza in which Blake first described the emotions of the nurse, the spiritual mother of many children.
"When the voices of children are heard in the vale,
And laughter is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still."
And here is the equally quiet verse which William Blake afterwards wrote down, equally calmly—
"When the laughter of children is heard on the hill,
And whisperings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale."
That last monstrous line is typical. He would mention with as easy an emphasis that a woman's face turned green as that the fields were green when she looked at them. That is the quality of Blake which is most personal
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