Lambeth North
English Poetry
William Blake
1757-1827, English poet, artist and engraver. London.
"In pain [man] sighs, in pain he labours in his universe, screaming in birds over the deep, and howling in the wolf over the slain, and moaning in the cattle…"
'Listen, I will tell thee what is done in the caverns of the grave... As the seed waits eagerly watching for its flower and fruit, [and] anxious its little soul looks out into the clear expanse to see if hungry winds are abroad with their invisible army, so Man looks out in tree and herb and fish and bird and beast... He touches the remotest pole, and in the center weeps that man should labour and sorrow, and learn and forget, and return to the dark valley whence he came, to begin his labours anew. In pain he sighs, in pain he labours in his universe, screaming in birds over the deep, and howling in the wolf over the slain, and moaning in the cattle...
Blake wrote most of THE FOUR ZOAS when he lived in Hercules Buildings in Lambeth,' said Quintin. 'It is dated 1797. We might be travelling under the very spot where he lived at that time.'
'He said it was mostly dictated to him by his dead brother, Robert,' repled Miranda. 'So obviously some form of automatic writing, like the techniques that the surrealists experimented with, a hundred years later.'
It certainly worked for him,' enthused Quintin.
'Yes,' agreed Miranda. 'He seemed to be dredging up all sorts of things from the English collective unconscious.'