I return you Blake's poesies,[164] metrical and graphic, with thanks. With this and the book, I have sent a rude scrawl as to the order in which I was pleased by the several poems.
With respectful compliments to Mrs. Tulk, I remain, dear sir, your obliged
BLAKE'S POEMS.--I begin with my dyspathies that I may forget them, and have uninterrupted space for loves and sympathies. Title-page and the following emblem contain all the faults of the drawings with as few beauties as could be in the compositions of a man who was capable of such faults and such beauties. The faulty despotism in symbols amounting in the title-page to the [Greek: misêton], and occasionally, irregular unmodified lines of the inanimate, sometimes as the effect of rigidity and sometimes of exossation like a wet tendon. So likewise the ambiguity of the drapery. Is it a garment or the body incised and scored out? The lumpness (the effect of vinegar on an egg) in the upper one of the two prostrate figures in the title-page, and the straight line down the waistcoat of pinky goldbeaters' skin in the next drawing, with the I don't-know-whatness of the countenance, as if the mouth had been formed by the habit of placing the tongue not contemptuously, but stupidly, between the lower gums and the lower jaw--these are the only _repulsive_ faults I have noticed. The figure, however, of the second leaf, abstracted from the _expression_ of the countenance given it by something about the mouth, and the interspace from the lower lip to the chin, is such as only a master learned in his art could produce.
_N. B._ I signifies "It gave me great pleasure." [I], "Still greater." [II], "And greater still," [OH], "In the highest degree." O, "In the lowest."
Shepherd, I; Spring, I (last stanza, [I]); Holy Thursday, [II]; Laughing Song, [I]; Nurse's Song, I; The Divine Image, [OH]; The Lamb, [I]; The little black Boy, [OH] yea [OH+OH]; Infant Joy, [II] (N. B. For the three last lines I should write, "When wilt thou smile," or "O smile, O smile! I'll sing the while." For a babe two days old does not, cannot smile, and innocence and the very truth of Nature must go together. Infancy is too holy a thing to be ornamented). "The Echoing Green," I, (the figures [I], and of the second leaf, [II]); "The Cradle Song," I; "The School Boy," [II]; Night, [OH]; "On another's Sorrow," I; "A Dream," ?; "The little boy lost," I (the drawing, [I]); "The little boy found," I; "The Blossom," O; "The Chimney Sweeper," O; "The Voice of the Ancient Bard," O.