Do what you will this life's a fiction

by William Blake

Blake manuscript - Notebook - page 098 reversed

Edited text:^[1]

cxxxi

Do what you will this life's a fiction,
And is made up of contradiction.

MS. Book, p. 98, above stanza C 4 of ' Fayette' (MS. Book, xxxvi), which
appears upside down, written from the reversed end of the book. Printed
here for first time.

________________________________________

Other versions:^[2]

*

Do what you will this Life’s a fiction,^[3]
And is made up [o]^[4] of Contradiction.
 
(The Everlasting Gospel , fragment "j" 50-51)

Versions written elsewhere in the MS. Book:

a)

This corporeal life’s a fiction
And is made up of contradiction.

(The Everlasting Gospel, deleted in fragment "k" )

b)

This corporeal All a fiction
And is made up of Contradiction.

(The Everlasting Gospel, deleted in fragment "k" )

c)

All corporeal life’s a fiction
And is made up of Contradiction.

(The Everlasting Gospel, deleted in fragment "k" )

d)

Reasoning upon its own Dark Fiction
In Doubt which is Self Contradiction.

(The Everlasting Gospel, fragment "k" 91-92)

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Notes

1. The poetical works of William Blake; a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals; With variorum readings and bibliographical notes and prefaces, edited by Sampson, John, Clarendon Press Oxford 1905, c. 239.
2. "The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake", ed. by David V. Erdman, Anchor Books, 1988.
3. Here and further Blake wrote "Lifes" or "lifes" instead of "life’s". -- The note by the editor of Wikisource.
4. Deleted.