The Selected Poems of William Blake

‘Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained’ Painter, engraver and poet, William Blake (1757–1827) was born to a hosier family that migrated from Ireland to London. Blake was homeschooled and began life as an engraver, married Catherine with whom he forged a lifelong partnership. His work in poetry remained largely unrecognized during his lifetime. Later in the twentieth century while editing an edition of Blake’s work, W.B. Yeats marvelled at his poetic and philosophical ideas. William Wordsworth famously commented, “There is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott.” The Selected Poems of William Blake celebrates Blake as a major poet, a profound thinker, and one of the most original and exciting artists whose two early collections of poetry, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, contain memorable lyric verses embodying the emerging spirit of Romanticism. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, widely considered as one of his most inspired and original work, is both a humorous satire on religion and morality that concisely expresses Blake’s essential wisdom and philosophy.