"Poems That Speak,"

Edited by Ronald Ginther, With Commentary

To me, and maybe to you too, these poems speak of things that challenge us all today, because if we do not recognize them for what they are, they will destroy us, while they are presently enslaving and exploiting us. If we do not know we are slaves, we still are slaves. Bob Dylan wrote in his song, "You gotta serve somebody!" And we do serve somebody. What is it? Who is it? Let these poems speak, and tell you who and what that slavemaster may be in your life.

The Sick Rose

by William Blake

O Rose, thou art sick

The invisible worm

That flies in the night

In the howling storm

He found out thy bed

Of Crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

Think bull in a china shop, or, better, Johnny Cash in a Manhattan cocktail party with a classical ensemble playing Mozart in the background. William Blake, 1757-1827, moved against the tide of his times, and was an original, a poetic genius, creating a visionary world in his poetry and art etchings that challenged the glittering Enlightenment society of 18th century Britain and Europe that dominated all aspects of civilization, with the name "Age of Rationalism" applied to it later that signifies how it elevated man's reason to the highest position--relegating visions and feeling and even love and affection to lower positions. Balls at the royal court and in the luxurious country mansions of the nobility reflected the exclusive, self-centered ideals of this Age of Reason. Powdered, bewigged, ribboned, overdressed aristocrats, both gentlemen and ladies, dancing elaborate minuets or discoursing on intellectual topics in elegant salons or dining at splendidly set tables loaded with all the delicacies the riches of this upper class could afford, or sitting in gilt theatres watching the latest French play of Moliere or Racine, or listening to classical music being played in the royal opera houses--all this refinement and glitter and witty talk, Blake had no part in, because the world he sought after had nothing to do with this superficial, proud, over-intellectualized world-view and philosophy and the oppressive, over-privileged society based on it. Beneath this thin upper crust seethed the miseries of the unwashed, uneducated, impoverished masses Blake himself knew from childhood in the home of a working class shopman. But he did not just reject something bad and rotten at the core, with no alternative. He proposed a whole world order based on other entirely different foundations. To his view, life as it was then ordered, society with it, was sick, like a rose that droops and wilts because a hidden worm is gnawing on its vital green stem and gradually cutting away its life, sapping its strength, its juices, until its dies. This is a simple event found in nature, but Blake uses it to describe his world, which is dominated (and being ruined) by the Rationalists of his day. We too face a world being ruined by the "secularists" and "Humanists" of our day. No society can survive based on their programs and principles, and statistics prove that societies in the West are dying, not slowly either, but rapidly. The West is doomed by this later development of Rationalism, the dragon that Blake fought his entire life, not with a sword, but with the weapons of his magnificent poetry, poetic vision, and his art.

Our "Rose" is deathly sick, indeed! Secularism and humanism, in their radical Left organized state, have blighted our society and our nation, even poisoning the whole world, not just the Western nations. What are the signs of this blight and toxic decline of civilization and human life. Just look around, friend! We desperately need poets like William Blake today, visionaries with courage and persistence, who will not quit and give up warning the people when the present dying system with great resources seems to be unbeatable. Again, Blake came with an alternative, he did not just criticize. He lived obscurely, unknown and unnoticed most of his life, finding a following of educated, renowned persons only late in life. He could have lived and died in bitterness because of his poverty and obscure life, but he was not bitter and he found friends to enjoy his life work and his company in later life. Most of his life Blake also faced a hostile system, and might have been hanged at one point if he had lost a suit against him charging him with sedition--a capital offense in his time. He favored a violent revolution in his earlier life, but later swung to a philosophical vision that did not require it to bring about the change he ardently yearned to see in human life and society. Blake was a sort of underdog and a fighter like Johnny Cash, who stood in a class by himself. He has to be appreciated on his own terms, and increasingly his reputation has greater, because more and more people have understood that fact. How a William Blake arose in Britain in circumstances and in an intellectual climate so unfriendly to his kind of thinking and feeling has to be a great mystery. His father was a haberdasher (men's clothing merchant) and he was largely self-educated. His only formal education was in art. He married the illiterate daughter of a market gardener. Despite such humble beginnings, he rose to the very highest place in English literature and art, and is a peer to such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Turner. Even there he remains an original. His brilliance is undimmed, and probably will always be.

(These comments on Blake, whom I have always admired as a person and a poet, are based on the prefatory notes to Blake in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Fifth Edition, but my opinions are my own.--Ed.)

THIS SECOND POEM BY WILLIAM BLAKE MAY ARGUABLY BE THE MOST RENOWNED AND POWERFUL POEM IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, AFTER THE EPIC OF PARADISE LOST BY JOHN MILTON.

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

What hand made the merciless terrorists who work secretly and hiddenly even now to blow up entire cities of millions of men, women, and children, using nuclear bombs brought in suitcases from rogue nuclear nations such as North Korea or Iran or even former nuclear-armed Soviet states? What produced an Osama bin Ladin and all the others like him who are preaching wars of extermination and the violent overthrow and subjugation of the West after raining down missiles on the cities and capitals of Europe and America? Was it God's hand, who created the Lamb, but may also have framed the Tyger Blake described? How can you put the Lamb of Christ together with the Tyger of the forest and the night? Or was the Tyger created by some evil force or evil being, commonly called Satan? Was Osama bin Ladin, and those like him, who do his bidding in "sleeper cells," going to their fiery deaths in the crashing jet airliners of 9/11 into New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon-- were they Satan's children?

(TAKE A WALK WITH THE POET AS HE WANDERS THE TWISTING, NARROW ALLEYS AND THEN THE BROAD, MAGNIFICENT AVENUES, WKILE PEEKING INTO THE GATED AND FENCED PARKS AND THE THE GATED AND GUARDED PRIVATE STREETS OF THE WEALTHY WHO CAN AFFORD TO LIVE THERE IN EXCLUSIVE COMPANY--ALL WHAT COULD BE EXPECTED TO BE SEEN IN PERHAPS THE WORLD'S BIGGEST METROPOLIS, LONDON IN 1794. YOU WILL SEE A BEWILDERING, ENDLESS ARRAY OF PALACES, GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS AND FORTRESSES, MANSIONS, EDIFICES OF RELIGION, PILLARED BANKS AND EMPORIUMS OF TRADE, STATUES AND IMPORTED OBJECTS ON DISPLAY SUCH AS THE OBELISK OF KARNAK, EVERYWHERE MILLING AROUND THEM, THE VAST RIVERS OF HUMANITY AND THE CARTS AND WAGONS THAT BROUGHT IN GOODS FROM THE SHIPS CROWDING THE RIVER WHARVES. THIS GIGANTIC HIVE OF BUILDINGS AND PEOPLE, ALL MAKING A CLAMOR THAT NEVER STOPS, DAY OR NIGHT.

Look at the gilded arriages with ladies in them dressed in silk and tall plumes with ribboned hats and towers of hair decorated with jewels and silk bows, sniffing perfumed sachets to keep away the odors from the the horse-drawn carts and wagons brought in from the country loaded with vegetables, mutton, live sheep, hogs, chickens, geese, and all sorts of woven or crafted items for sale. Lords in mountainous white, curled wigs, attended by their footmen in splendid uniforms, push aside little boy or girl flower venders hawking their flowers to the rich, while they wear rags to cover their legs and arms, as they make their way into exclusive men's clubs or the theater or the opera house or posh mansions or gambling houses. Prostitutes try this man and that with a wink and a nod, no matter whether he is lord or a common laborer. The jobless, in stinking rags that resemble rubbish, not clothing, lie about on street, or wander about looking for a handout if they can find a heart of pity and compassion. Drunks clog the running open gutters, and naked children, forgotten by their mothers who may be drunk or dead or runaway, play in the dirt next to them, as wagons nearly ride them over.

SMOKE OF COUNTLESS CHIMNEYS, DEAFENING NOISE AND CONFUSION, BELLOWING CRIES OF SHOPKEEPERS SEEKING CUSTOMERS, WAILS AND CRIES OF PAIN AND SUFFERING TOO--THE RESTLESS CITY OF THE WORLD NEVER SLEEPS, NEVER SLEEPS, AS ITS ENGINES OF COMMERCE AND BUSINESS GRIND HUMAN LIVES AND BURN THEM AS FUEL.)

London

I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infant's cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry

Every blackning Church appalls,

And the hapless Soldier's sight

Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlot's curse

Blasts the new-born Infant's tear,

And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

As for "London," this is a magnificent poem of its own special kind, so that I hesitate to put too specific an explanation on the particular terms or scenes of this poem. I don't think it is speaking primarily against diseases of the lower classes, or targeting the oppression of the State Church of England, or decrying the prostitution and forced service as soldiers as the chief evils that should shame London's rulers, though they are evils no one can deny. What is worst to Blake are the "mind-forg'd manacles" of the mind, shackles devised by the commanding Rationalists of his day, which oppress all human life, driving the meaning of human life into the depths of despair and hopelessness and futility. A new-born's prospects are blasted, are aborted, according to Blake, for he cannot escape such a toxic and cruel system spun from the minds of a select elite. That Rationalist system favors them alone, while it damns everyone else to filthy and hopeless servitude in support of the elegant society ruling them. The 18th century mind has created this horrible two-world system, it is all intellect and mind, destroying all true heart and feeling and genuine truth-- the things that make a society not only nourishing, bright,and life-giving, but beautiful and happy. A privileged elite is like a sucking vampire on a host animal, enjoying all the benefits temporarily, while the mass of people suffer the most abject conditions and are forced to support the luxury and greed and arrogance of the lifestyle of the rich and famous. They are bled to death, but gradually, not all at once. This is social inequity, to be sure, but is mental, intellectual, rationalist, based on a world-view that is death to the beautiful world as God intended it in Eden, death to the human cosmos too. Everything ends up enslaved by the system, and withers and dies eventually, in dirt, disease, and despair. Blake sees charters, constricting laws and deeds and contracts always favoring the oppressors, binding every street's businesses in London while the people mill through them, disenfranchise, impoverished, propertyless, their faces etched or marked with weakness and woe. Even the wide and noble-looking Thames River is "chartered." It too is controlled, ruled, exploited, not for the benefit of the people but for the elite. There is no alternative, no refuge even in the Church, for the poor and oppressed. When a young man and woman marry, they are, figuratively, riding a marriage hearse instead of a bridal carriage--for their union is doomed from the start in such a system. Again, it is not the system, so much as it is the world-view, the philosophy, the pretentions and assumptions of the self-confident, smiling Rationalists in charge of London and the 18th century world that Blake so deplored and suffered under.

What difference, friend, is there between Blake's London and our own urban society of 21st Century America? None, in his view! He would see the same weakness and woe in people's faces if he walked the streets of our cities, would he not? Drug addicts, thieves, robbers, murderers, prostitutes, child abusers and their victims--while victims turn victimizers in an endless cycle of violence and greed and traffiking in human lives. Misery is misery, whether 18th century or 21st century. Slavery is slavery. We are just as enslaved today to consumerism and materialism and the endless treadmill we all must race around in to keep the system going. Again, we have our own mind-forged manacles, which a tiny elite at the top has put in place and maintains for its own benefit and uses. But we too have forged them, have we not? We have an alternative in Jesus Christ alone, or we can choose to ignore His grace and deliverance and take our chances on our own, joining with the crowd that wanders through the chartered streets of America today, desperately searching for a momentary escape in porn or prostitution or drugs, while chains drag at our heels, shackles for slaves, that are attached to that looming black wheel turning in the background that is the driving engine of the whole human-destroying system.

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