What is it that transfixes one in any couplet such as this:
'If the sun and moon should doubt
They'd immediately go out'?
It is no more than a nursery statement, there is not even an image in it, and yet it sings to the brain, it cuts into the very flesh of the mind, as if there were a great weight behind it. Is it that it is an arrow, and that it comes from so far, and with an impetus gathered from its speed out of the sky?
The lyric poet, every lyric poet but Blake, sings of love; but Blake sings of forgiveness:
'Mutual forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the gates of Paradise.'
Poets sing of beauty, but Blake says:
'Soft deceit and idleness,
These are Beauty's sweetest dress.'
They sing of the brotherhood of men, but Blake points to the 'divine image':
'Cruelty has a human heart
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secrecy the human dress.'
