William Blake
William Blake
William Blakewas an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic works have been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth28 November 1757
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy.
When the voices of children are heard on the green, / And laughing is heard on the hill, / My heart is at rest within my breast, / And everything else is still.
Praises reap not! Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laugh'd And all the hills echoed
Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me.
I see every thing I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes.
O! why was I born with a different face? / Why was I not born like the rest of my race?
Pity would be no more / If we did not make somebody poor; / And Mercy no more could be/ If all were as happy as we.
Piping down the valleys wild, / Piping songs of pleasant glee, / On a cloud I saw a child.
I thought Love lived in the hot sunshine,But O, he lives in the moony light!I thought to find Love in the heat of day,But sweet Love is the comforter of night.
Man's Desires are limited by his Perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceived.
When I saw that rage was vainAnd to sulk would nothing gain,Turning many a trick and wileI began to soothe and smile.