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The little vagabond

Dear mother, dear mother, the church is cold,
But the ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm;
Besides I can tell where I am used well,
Such usage in Heaven will never do well.

But if at the church they would give us some ale,
And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,
We’d sing and we’d pray all the live-long day,
Nor ever once wish from the church to stray.

Then the parson might preach, and drink, and sing,
And we’d be as happy as birds in the spring;
And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at church,
Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.

And God, like a father rejoicing to see
His children as pleasant and happy as he,
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the barrel,
But kiss him, and give him both drink and apparel.

In this poem it is obvious that Blake disagrees with many facets of the Christian religion as an institutionalized system. Though he reportedly attended a religious ceremony only three times in his life (his baptism, marriage and funeral service), he claimed himself to be a devout Christian. His philosophy of Christianity was considered blasphemous, but he was never charged with such a crime. However, he did express his critical opinions of the Church in both essay and poetic form.

Blake expressed many times that the church was a spiritual obstacle. In “The Little Vagabond” Blake portrays the “loveless morality of the churches” (Raine 148). The church, the clerics of the church and the church ceremony altogether is cold and distant. “Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold” (“The Little Vagabond ln i) is the opening line of the poem. It is obvious that the young child is distraught with his church because it is not quenching his spiritual thirst. However, he offers a remedy:

“But if at the Church they would give us some Ale, / And a pleasant fire our souls to regale, / We’d sing and we’d pray all the live-long day, / Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray.” (ln v-viii)

These lines plainly, but clearly, express Blake’s religious stance. The church is a cold place that has kept a distance between its members and itself. Therefore, the meanings of the gospels have been delivered in a way that has no meaning or effectiveness. The word of God has been marginalized when it should in fact be communicated in a kind loving manner. The preacher is God and the members of the church are God as well. Instead, the preacher is a merciless intruder that is penetrating the word into the congregation’s heads not alloying thought, but perpetuating cold disciplined faith.

If the setting of the church were to become more laid back and comfortable then the results would be positive indeed, “And God, like a father rejoicing to see / His children as pleasant and happy as he” (xiii – xiv), but for now the church is a cold place with no fire and no ale. The preacher is as dry as a desert, and the lessons of the gospels are spouted out to an unenthused distant audience. The child in this poem (though told by the bard) shares a close connection (as Blake believed all children did) with God that has not yet been clouded by the harshness of life. Therefore, he can make such observances and offer his advice. Children share a connection with God that is innocent and fair, this theme is made apparent in mostly all of Blake’s poems. Consequently, God is still a loving father to this child (as stated in lines xiii – xiv), and not the vengeful God that the preacher most likely is painting him to be. This poem is used by Blake as a way to communicate his belief that the church was suffering from cold militant preaching rather than warm intoxicating love.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Even within the context of Blake’s canon, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell stands out for its combination of genres (e.g., poetry and prose, Menippean satire and cultural history) and its heterodox perspectives. Through the voice of the “Devil,” Blake parodies and attacks the theology of Emanuel Swedenborg, the cosmology and ethics of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and biblical history and morality as constructed by the “Angels” of the established church and state. Energy and passion are positively valorized; reason and temperance are characterized as restraints on spiritual insight and self-expression. The concluding three plates (25-27), “A Song of Liberty,” announce the coming revolution.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a satiric attack on orthodoxy in general and on the Swedenborgians in particular, but it is also an extended description of the educational and developmental process by which the poet-prophet is created. In addition, it is a revolutionary prophecy, written against the historical backdrop of political upheaval in America and in France. The Marriage begins with a poem, “The Argument,” in which Blake introduces his prophetic character Rintrah; it ends with another poem, “A Song of Liberty,” in which Blake celebrates revolution and foresees a new age of political and religious freedom. Between these two poems is a series of prose doctrinal statements, each followed by a “Memorable Fancy,” which comments on the preceding statement while parodying Swedenborg’s “Memorable Relations” from the latter’s Heaven and Hell. Throughout the work, Blake presents a series of contraries—Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, Angel and Devil, Reason and Energy—but then appears to reverse the traditional values associated with each term, thus celebrating Energy, Evil, and even Satan himself. Most critics today reject such a reading as simplistic and insist that, rather than merely inverting the terms of the contraries, Blake was questioning both terms and exploring the limitations of each. The “Proverbs of Hell” section contains some of the most outrageous and most widely-quoted passages of the entire text, among them: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,” “The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction,” and “Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.”

Divine image

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

In The Divine Image, the figures of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love are presented by Blake as the four virtues which are object of prayer in moments of distress, being God praised for his lovely caring and blessing to comfort man. The four virtues are depicted by the author as essential not only in God, but also in man; as Mercy is found in the human heart and Pity in the human face. Similarly, abstract qualities like Peace and Love exist in the human form, becoming the divine form and body of man and resembling God’s substantial virtues. Consequently, Blake not only introduces a similarity between the divine image of a benevolent God and the human form, but also the concept of the creation of man after God’s divine constituency. Regarded as inborn characteristics of humans by Blake, these essentially Christian virtues can be found in every man’s soul on Earth, notwithstanding his origin or religious belief. When Blake refers to the prayer of a Jew or a Turk, he exemplifies all humankind sharing God’s virtues in an ideal world regardless the concept of Divinity men may have.

I Heard an Angel

I heard an Angel singing
When the day was springing,
“Mercy, Pity, Peace
Is the world’s release.”

Thus he sung all day
Over the new mown hay,
Till the sun went down
And haycocks looked brown.

I heard a Devil curse
Over the heath and the furze,
“Mercy could be no more,
If there was nobody poor,

And pity no more could be,
If all were as happy as we.”
At his curse the sun went down,
And the heavens gave a frown.

Down pour’d the heavy rain
Over the new reap’d grain …
And Miseries’ increase
Is Mercy, Pity, Peace.