Poems: Restored Classics to Go Edition

· Otbebookpublishing
Ebook
106
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

Alice Meynell's introduction to William Blake presents him as a poet of radiant genius and uncompromising vision, a figure whose language resists easy explanation yet burns with moral force, spiritual intensity, and startling clarity. She praises the luminous simplicity of his greatest lyrics, his association with light, and his power to remake morality, faith, and reality itself, while also offering a careful selection meant to represent Blake broadly. A brief life of the poet follows, tracing his early visions, artistic training, marriage to Catherine Boucher, prophetic career, years in London and Felpham, and the fierce temperament that shaped both his art and his life, ending with a tribute to his lasting legacy. The poems themselves move from the seasonal and celestial beauty of Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Morning, and Evening Star into love songs, grief, memory, and imaginative freedom. They deepen into darker contrasts of harsh winter, captivity, melancholy, and madness, then widen into pastoral play, mythic longing, and historical grandeur in works such as "Blind-Man's Buff," "To the Muses," "King Edward the Third," and The Black Prince. Blake's Songs of Innocence and related visionary lyrics unite tenderness with social protest, celebrating childhood, nature, and divine compassion while exposing the suffering of chimney sweeps, lost children, and the poor. Across the collection, innocence and experience, pity and injustice, hope and desolation are held in luminous, unforgettable balance. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
Alice Meynell's introduction to William Blake presents him as a poet of radiant genius and uncompromising vision, a figure whose language resists easy explanation yet burns with moral force, spiritual intensity, and startling clarity. She praises the luminous simplicity of his greatest lyrics, hi...

About the author

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and visionary artist born in London in 1757, a city that would shape both his imagination and his lifelong concern with the struggles of ordinary people. Trained as an engraver, he developed a unique artistic and literary voice outside the mainstream of his era, publishing his own work with strikingly original designs and illustrations. Though often overlooked in his lifetime, Blake created some of the most enduring poetry in English, blending lyric intensity, prophetic vision, and radical social critique. His writing explores innocence and experience, the tension between imagination and authority, the cruelty of oppression, the sacred in everyday life, and the possibility of spiritual and creative freedom. These themes still feel urgent today, especially in a world wrestling with inequality, institutional power, and the need to preserve inner vision in the face of conformity. Blake's legacy lies not only in his poems but in his refusal to separate art from belief, or beauty from moral urgency. He remains a vital figure for readers who are drawn to visionary language, symbolic depth, and works that challenge conventional ways of seeing. Readers interested in poetry, spiritual questioning, political imagination, and fiercely original art will find Blake especially rewarding.

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and visionary artist born in London in 1757, a city that would shape both his imagination and his lifelong concern with the struggles of ordinary people. Trained as an engraver, he developed a unique artistic and literary voice outside the mainstream of...

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