habit, when reading this marvellous Ode to friends, to omit one or two passages, especially that beginning:
'But there's a Tree, of many one,'
lest I should be rendered ridiculous, being unable to explain precisely what I admired. Not that I acknowledged this to be a fair test. But with Blake I could fear nothing of the kind. And it was this very stanza which threw him almost into a hysterical rapture. His delight in Wordsworth's poetry was intense.[1] Nor did it seem less, notwithstanding the reproaches he continually cast on Wordsworth for his imputed worship of nature;[2] which in the mind of Blake constituted Atheism [p. 46].
28/2/52.
The combination of the warmest praise with imputations which from another would assume the most serious character, and the liberty he took to interpret as he pleased, rendered it as difficult to be offended as to reason with him. The eloquent descriptions of Nature in Wordsworth's poems were conclusive proofs of atheism, for whoever believes in Nature, said Blake, disbelieves in God. For Nature is the work of the
