September 11
Two Poems by William Blake
A Divine Image
--A Song of Experience
Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face,
Terror, the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy, the Human Dress.
The Human Dress is forgéd Iron,
The Human Form, a fiery Forge,
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd,
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.
*
The Divine Image
--A Song of Innocence
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is God, our father dear:
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is Man, his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew.
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.
About Susan
Born in Long Beach, California, Susan Browne has lived most of her life in the Bay Area. Her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Subtropics, River City, The Mississippi Review, Gargoyle, Margie, American Life in Poetry, and other literary journals and...
Connections
Causes Susan Browne Supports
Unicef
Amnesty International
Run Together, A Race to Raise Money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
Visionary
Oh, William Blake! Sometimes abstruse but always stirring. A man outside Time, like St John the Divine. He lived about four miles from here in 1800, in the coastal village of Felpham, West Sussex, UK.
My novel Dreams of Gold, written under the pseudonym Marion Grace, has quotations from his poems prefacing each section.
Hello Rosy
Blake lived that close to you? The air is rare there!
Your novel sounds wonderful!