The Life of William Blake essays

The Life of William Blake essays Where the melodious winds have birth; The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forc'd, the notes are few! In those lines, it has been said, the eighteenth century dies to music. (Wilson 1) The writer of these lines was William Blake, English poet, painter and engraver who created a unique form of illustrated verse. His poetry, inspired by mystical vision, is among the most original, lyric, and prophetic in the English language. William Blake has become one of the English speaking worlds most renowned poets and artists. (Essick 9) His writings are taught frequently in schools and studied by scholars. However, in his lifetime, his works were hardly known except for a small group of patrons and connoisseurs. His symbolic pictures and visionary poems are not always easy to understand, because he invented his own mythology to express his ideas. His pictures and poems reveal a powerful artistic imagination. William Blake was born on November 28, 1757, the third of five children born to James and Catherine Blake. His father was a London hosier, living at 28 Broad Street, Golden Square. Although Mr. Blake was a non-conformist, William was christened on the eleventh of December at St. James Church, Picadilly (Wilson 4) London, where he lived for all but three years of his life, and the social class of shopkeepers in which he was raised, had great influences on the course of Blakes life. He started having visions, where he saw angels walking around, when he was only four years old. This disturbed his truth-loving parents. Because William was strange and stormy, his father decided he should be spared the discipline of school. His mother was probably the one who taught him to read and write. While Blake received very little of traditional education, he was well versed in Greek and Latin literature, the Bible, and Milton. Blake continued to grow intellec...