William Blake on the Lord’s Prayer

191 Pages·1927·3.923 MB·English

by  J.H. Clarke, M.D.

WILLIAM BLAKE
ON
THE LORD'S PRAYER

WILLIAM BLAKE
(1757-1827,
ON
THE LORD'S PRAYER
BY
JOHN HENRY CLARKE. M.D.
THE HERMES PRESS.
MCMXXVII.
"To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the Immortal
"Eyes of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought;
"into Eternity; Ever expanding into the Bosom of
"God, the Human Imagination."
TO
"THE YOUNG MEN OF THE NEW AGE"
- OUR OWN
WHOM BLAKE ADDRESSED
IN
DESPAIR
OF FINDING VISION AND UNDERSTANDING
IN HIS OWN TIME
THIS FRAGMENT
IS
DEDICATED
IN
HOPE.
Copyright In
Gre..tBrlt&in.
PREFACE.
Some thirty odd years ago, having a long journey
into the country bejore me, I put into my travelling
bag the Aldine edition of Blane's poems. up to then
01
I had been familiar with the "Songs Innocence
and of Experience." I had now the isolation from
external affairs and the solitudesometimes to befound
in a long train-journey, and I embarked upon that
amazingdocument, " The EverlastingGospel." From
thatmomentBlasegripped me with a holdwhich time
has only strengthened.
Blake says his conception of the most sublime poetry
is an allegory addressed to the intellectual powers and
entirely hidden from the corporeal understanding.
My "corporeal understanding" did not attempt the
task of comprehending, but my inner understanding
knew it jar divine truth.
Sincethatday I have seized every opportunity which
has come in my way of acquiring such aids as have
presented themselves of educating my corporeal under
standing up to such a point that I could shape for
myself, and possibly for others, the essence of the
Message which Blake completed onhis death-bed just
one hundred years ago. And there has been no lack
of such aids. They have beengathering in numbers
and power for the last half-century and scarcelyaday
now passes in which someaddition to them of moment
is not announced.
One of Blake's designs depicts Nebuchadnezzar
in his madness. We live, as Blake lived, in a
Nebuchadnezzar age. We are madly clinging with
hands and feet to the materiality oj earth when we
should be standing erect upon it or moving over its
surfacerulingempiresofthemind. Blakehasrevealed
to us, as nooneelseever did before,whatthoseempires
are, and what are the powers in man of recognising
them and oj exercising his rule.
The point oj advantage in our age over that in
which Blake lived and wrote is this, that now there
is a wide-spread recognition oj the fact that the
material diet on which our minds are banquetting
can never satisjy the soul of man. Thus it is
coming about that the more like Nebuchadnezear
man becomes in mentality the keener is the revolt
against the madness. That the revolt is taking many
forms, some of them only a little less insane than
that against which it isprotesting,neednotbedenied;
but the revolt itself is an advance.
The essenceof the Revolt means this, that although
we are all more or less wedded toour own conceptions