ANALYSIS

A. Biography
Blake was born in London, where he spent most of his life. His father was a
successful London hosier and attracted by the doctrines of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Blake
was first educated at home, chiefly by his mother. His parents encouraged him to collect
prints of the Italian masters, and in 1767 sent him to Henry Pars' drawing school. From
his early years, he experienced visions of angels and ghostly monks, he saw and
conversed with the angel Gabriel, the Virgin Mary, and various historical figures.
At the age of 14 Blake was apprenticed for seven years to the engraver James
Basire. Gothic art and architecture influenced him deeply. After studies at the Royal
Academy School, Blake started to produce watercolors and engrave illustrations for
magazines. In 1783 he married Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a market gardener.
Blake taught her to draw and paint and she assisted him devoutly. In 1774 Blake opened
with his wife and younger brother Robert a print shop at 27 Broad Street, but the venture
failed after the death of Robert in 1787. Blake's important cultural and social contacts
included Henry Fuseli, Reverend A.S. Mathew and his wife, John Flaxman (1755-1826),
a sculptor and draughtsman, Tom Paine, William Godwin, and Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu
(1720-1800), married to the wealthy grandson of the earl of Sandwich.
William Blake was the earliest of a long line of reformist Romantic poets. Regarded
widely as a mad man, Blake was above all else a rebel whose anti-authoritarian spirit, and
belief in freedom and individuality formed the basis of his revolutionary poetry. With it’s
own unique style and form, Blake’s poetry outlived its critics, and William Blake is now
widely identified as one of the greatest Lyric poets of all time. His early poems Blake
wrote at the age of 12. His first book of poems, POETICAL SKETCHES, appeared in
1783 and was followed by SONGS OF INNOCENCE (1789), and SONGS OF
EXPERIENCE (1794). His most famous poem, 'The Tyger', was part of his Songs of
Experience. Typical for Blake's poems were long, flowing lines and violent energy,
combined with aphoristic clarity and moments of lyric tenderness. He approved of free
love, and sympathized with the actions of the French revolutionaries until the events of
1794 sickened him. In 1790 Blake engraved THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND
HELL, a book of paradoxical aphorisms and his principal prose work. It expressed
Blake's revolt against the established values of his time. "Prisons are built with stones of
Law, brothels with bricks of Religion." Radically he sided with the Satan in Milton's
Paradise Lost and attacked the conventional religious views in a series of aphorisms. But
the poet's life in the realms of images did not please his wife who once remarked: "I have
very little of Mr. Blake's company. He is always in Paradise." Some of Blake's
contemporaries called him a harmless lunatic.
The Blakes moved south of the Thames to Lambeth in 1790. During this time Blake
began to work on his 'prophetic books', where he expressed his lifelong concern with the
struggle of the soul to free its natural energies from reason and organized religion. He
wrote THE VISIONS OF THE DAUGHTERS OF ALBION (1793), AMERICA: A
PROPHESY (1793), THE BOOK OF URIZEN (1794), and THE SONG OF LOS (1795).
Blake hated the effects of the Industrial Revolution in England and looked forward to the
establishment of a New Jerusalem "in England's green and pleasant land." Between 1804
and 1818 he produced an edition of his own poem JERUSALEM with 100 engravings.
Although Blake's attacks on conventional religion were shocking in his own day,
his rejection of religiosity was not a rejection of religion per se. His view of orthodoxy is
evident in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a series of texts written in imitation of
Biblical prophecy. In The Everlasting Gospel, Blake does not present Jesus as a
philosopher or traditional messianic figure but as a supremely creative being, above
dogma, logic and even morality. Jesus, for Blake, symbolises the vital relationship and
unity between divinity and humanity: "All had originally one language and one religion:
this was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preaches the Gospel of
Jesus.”
Blake designed his own mythology, which appears largely in his prophetic books.
Within these Blake describes a number of characters, including 'Urizen', 'Enitharmon',
'Bromion' and 'Luvah'. This mythology seems to have a basis in the Bible and in Greek
mythology and it accompanies his ideas about the everlasting Gospel.
One of Blake's strongest objections to orthodox Christianity is that he felt it
encouraged the suppression of natural desires and discouraged earthly joy.
B. STRUCTURE OF WORK
This poem was made during the Enlightenment era when the intellectual
movements rapidly grew up. Many scientists came up with their scientific ideas which
mostly against the dogmatic Church. The churches insisted people to follow its dogmas
or they will be damned. In this poem, Blake is defending his religious faith against
science. Voltaire and Rousseau were considered philosophers on that era. However, their
views were completely different to each other. They even hated one another. Voltaire and
Rousseau taught two opposite ways in improving society and living a life of virtue.
Voltaire believed that the purpose of an individual is to refine the society in which he
lives, while Rousseau believed that civilization corrupts while nature refines. According
to the Bible, these two ideas were wrong. The bible said that every human is born with
sinful nature, there always be many sinful acts they might do in their lifetime. For the
Bible, and also for the church, the only way to live a life of virtue is by accepting Jesus as
the only Savior. Both Voltaire and Rousseau rejected orthodox Christianity.
The first and stanza of the poem shows the mockery toward Voltaire and Rousseau
and the rejection from people of French to the ideas of both philosophers:
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau:
Mock on, mock on: ‘tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a Gem,
Reflected in the beam divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking Eye,
But still in Israel’s paths they shine.
The sand is the metaphor that used to represent the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau. The
sand, or ideas, are thrown against the wind, the beliefs of society. The sand and the wind
are metaphors which indicate the society’s unwillingness to accept new ideas from
Voltaire and Rousseau. The Glory of God is manifested in ‘Israel’ as the symbol for
God’s children or God’s chosen people is immune from the mockery of unbelievers like
Voltaire and Rousseau.
 In the third stanza, this poem conveys that the human’s knowledge is only a small
particle in vast seashore. It can’t be compared to the All Powerful of God:
The Atoms of Democritus
And the Newton’s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.
Here, Blake seems to underestimate the science. The Democritus’ Atoms and The
Newton’s Particles of Light are two of the greatest discoveries of humankind. However,
no matter how great and powerful a human can be, he can never beat his creator, The
Almighty God. Human’s knowledge is only a tiny grain of sand in the middle of the large
amount of sands in vast sea shore. It can be seen that Blake opposed the Newtonian
scientific view about the universe. He also opposed the Enlightenment philosophy which
put science and nature above all, thus ignoring the Bible and the God’s power.