g after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;
Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Rise from their graves, and aspire
Where my sunflower wishes to go!

That is a curious flower to find growing in the London street; but it
suggests Blake's own life, which was outwardly busy and quiet, but inwardly
full of adventure and excitement. His last huge prophetic works, like
_Jerusalem_ and _Milton_ (1804), were dictated to him, he declares, by
supernatural means, and even against his own will. They are only half
intelligible, but here and there one sees flashes of the same poetic beauty
that marks his little poems. Critics generally dismiss Blake with the word
"madman"; but that is only an evasion. At best, he is the writer of
exquisite lyrics; at worst, he is mad only "north-northwest," like Hamlet;
and the puzzle is to find the method in his madness. The most amazing thing
about him is the perfectly sane and cheerful way in which he moved through
poverty and obscurity, flinging out exquisite poems or senseless
rhapsodies, as a child might play with gems or straws or sunbeams
indifferently. He was a gentle, kindly, most unworldly little man, with
extraordinary eyes, which seem even in the lifeless portraits to reflect
some unusual hypnotic power. He died obscurely, smiling at a vision of
Paradise, in 1827. That was nearly a century ago, yet he still remains one
of the most incomprehensible figures in our literature.

WORKS OF BLAKE. The _Poetical Sketches_, published in 1783, is a collection
of Blake's earliest poetry, much of it written in boyhood. It contains much
crude and incoherent work, but also a few lyrics of striking originality.
Two later and better known volumes are _Songs of Innocence_ and _Songs of
Experience_, reflecting two widely different views of the human soul. As in
all his works, there is an abundance of apparently worthless stuff in these
songs; but, in the language of miners, it is all "pay dirt"; it shows
gleams of golden grains that await our sifting, and now and then we find a
nugget unexpectedly:

My lord was like a flower upon the brows
Of lusty May; ah life as frail as flower!
My lord was like a star in highest heaven
Drawn down to earth by spells and wickedness;
My lord was like the opening eye of day;
But he is darkened; like the summer moon
Clouded; fall'n like the stately