Bring out the salient features of Blake's poetry
Blake was a lyrical poet. In his earlier lyrics, Blake followed the Elizabethan models and in his poetical Sketches and the Songs of Innocence are embodied some of the best lyrics of the English language. The Songs contained in the Poetical Sketches are very simple. The burden of the mystic strain that was to come later on and take the poet off his feet is not present in Poetical Sketches. Sill in some of the poems for example. In A War Song to an English Man and in love songs, the mystic note is traceable.
The songs of Innocence have happy notes, and in purity, sweetness, and intensity of feeling in the simple perfection of diction and variety of rhythm, these songs have no rivals. Sainsbury's remark that there are songs in Blake which for a certain combination of extreme simplicity with unearthly music no contemporary was to equal is perfectly justified. The later lyrics of Blake are metaphysical in nature.
The mystic fervour is present in them even though they may be simple. The Little Blake Boy, for example, is metaphysical in its nature, though it is extremely simple. In his songs of Experience, thought begins to predominate and the prophetic creed becomes clear still. After the songs contained in his volume, Blake ceased to be a writer of pure lyrics and became more and more a poet of visionary idealism, symbolism and mysticism.
In the later lyrics, which were few and far between, the prophetic inspiration never leaves him completely. In the lyrics where his prophetic strain becomes more important than the lyrical one, he becomes obscure or at least unexciting. His visions and mystical thoughts overpower the spontaneity of his lyrics.
It is this note of symbolism that mars the rhapsody of his lyrical utterances. The use of symbolism mars the rhapsody of his lyrics. It is in this note of symbolism and mysticism in his lyrics that Blake differs from Burns and Swinburne whose lyrics are simple and realistic. Blake gave greater emphasis on thought, Swinburne Ion sound and music in his lyrics.
On the whole, it may be said that Blake is one of the best lyric poets in England. " Indeed ' remarks C.M. Bowra, " no English poet, except Shakespeare, his written songs of such experience, lightness and melody. His words have an Elizabethan tilt, music emphasises the meaning and conforms exactly to it. " Miss Katheleen Raine remarks, Blake, as a lyrical poet is unsurpassed.
His vocabulary is as simple as that of a child. Every lyric is a window into the imaginative world. His poetic works embody some of the most perfect and the most original lyrics in the English language. " In simple yet beautifully apt language," says Albert, his lyric reveals a variety and spontaneity of feeling which place them on a bar with the common best in or literature.
Humanitarian note. -
The poets of the Romantic Revival pleaded in trumpet tones the equality of man. Burns and Blacks, long before Wordsworth and Shelley, struck the note of humanitarianism in their poetry. A note of love and sympathy was sounded by Blake in his poetry for the common people and the underdogs of society. His sympathy included even animals and birds. Blake was an ardent lover of freedom and liberty and in the following line, she passionately urges the liberty of all human beings without any distinction of black and white.
Let the slave grindling at the mill run out into the field
Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright air
Set the enchanted soul, shut up in darkness and sighing
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty sweary years
Rise and look out.
Mysticism in poetry is blended usually with a wishful e melancholy. The desire of the moth for the star, of the night for the morrow animates the poet's soul; and in his hungering after enternity, he feels more and more dissatisfied with the show of Paper 33 life. But Blake is an exception. He is a joyful mystic. For him the morning stars sing together and the splendour of life outweights its shadows. There are no mournful regrets in this verse no sighing for a day that is dead. Evil rouses his anger, not his tears. Sorrow her accepts cheerfully as a necessary twin to joy :
Joy and woe are waven fine
And, when this we rightly know
Safely through the world, we go.
Naturalism in Blake's poetry. Both the naturalism and mysticism of the Romantic Revival find expression in Blake. On this point, he differs from pioneers like Burs, who is simply naturalistic or Cowper, who is slightly touched by mysticism. On the naturalistic side, Blake deals with the simplest phases of life, with the instinctive life of the child, with the love of flowers, hill and streams, the blue sky and the brooding clouds.
Yet the mystical vision of the poet is always transforming these familiar things, touching obscure aspects and spiritualising the variest commonplace into something strange and wonderful.
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