blood." I say quite confidently that quality
cannot be ignored. You open (let us say) a volume of Blake, and your
eye falls on these two lines--

"When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears,"

And at once you are aware of an imagination different in kind from
the imagination you would recognise as English. Let us, if you
please, rule out all debate of superiority; let us take Shakespeare
for comparison, and Shakespeare at his best:--

"These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

Finer poetry than this I can hardly find in English to quote for you.
But fine as it is, will you not observe the matter-of-factness
(call it healthy, if you will, and I shall not gainsay you) beneath
Shakespeare's noble language? It says divinely what it has to say;
and what it has to say is full of solemn thought. But, for better or
worse (or, rather, without question of better or worse), Blake's
imagination is moving on a different plane. We may think it an
uncomfortably superhuman plane; but let us note the difference, and
note further that this plane was habitual with Blake. Now because of
his immense powers we are accustomed to think of Shakespeare as
almost superhuman: we pay that tribute to his genius, his strength,
and the enormous impression they produce on us. But a single couplet
of Blake's will carry more of this uncanny superhuman imagination
than the whole five acts of _Hamlet_. So great is Shakespeare, that
he tempts us to think him capable of any flight of wing; but set down
a line or two of Blake's--

"A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage . . .
A skylark wounded on the wing
Doth make a cherub cease to sing."

--And, simple as the thought is, at once you feel it to lie outside
the range of Shakespeare's philosophy. Shakespeare's men are fine,
brave, companionable fellows, full of passionate love, jealousy,
ambition; of humour, gravity, strength of mind; of laughter and rage