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Essay on What is 'Romantic' about William Blake?
William Blake’s Poetic Sketches mark an epoch in English literature, for they were the first opening of the long-sealed well of romantic poetry; they, were the true heralds of modern poetry of nature and enthusiasm. There is in them no trace of mysticism, but phrases and figures of speech that were soon to pass from the metaphorical to the symbolic stage, and put on mystical significance, are very common.
The singer of the "Mad Song" compares himself to a "fiend hid in a cloud"; and we shall presently hear in definitely mystical poems of "a child upon a cloud", and of "My brother John, the evil one, In a black cloud, making his moan"; for cloud and vapor became to him a symbol for bodily emotions, and for the body itself. Edward III tells of "golden cities", though as yet the poet knows nothing of the ages of gold, silver, and brass; and tells of the times when the pulse shall begin to beat slow,
"And taste, and touch, and sight, and sound, and smell,
That sing and dance round Reason's fine-wrought throne,
Shall flee away, and leave him all forlorn" --
though as yet the poet has not learned to count and symbolize these senses, and call them "the daughters of Albion", and draw them dancing about fallen man among the Druidic monuments of ancient Britain. (Erdman 95-96).
The Poetical Sketches is one of the most enduring works of the eighteenth century. In certain respects it belonged fully to its own time; in many others it presented new and individual characteristics. That Blake naturally followed certain fashions of his day has been seen in his catching the new Ossianic manner which so quickly became trite in the hands of servile copyists; seen again in his attempt at a conventional imitation of Spenser's stanzaic form.................
