William Blake, a poet, artist and mystic was one of England's original thinkers. His two volumes, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience contain some of the most unforgettable poems in the English language. On the surface, as simple nursery rhymes, they offer profound insights into human nature, and the need for social justice. Blake was born in Soho in 1757, the son of a hosier. Apart from the three years residing near Bognor Regis, he would spend his life in London, as Blake himself would note in his hymn to the capital, "near where the chartered Thames does flow." As a child, Blake claimed to have seen God at his window, and Angels bespangling the treetops of Peckham Rye. He would have visionary imagination throughout his life and many regarded him as a madman.
At the age of ten, Blake was apprenticed to an engraver, and later, studied briefly at The Royal Academy. During his long career as an artist and engraver he created magnificent illustrations for Dante and John Milton, and all of his works were self illustrated, full of invented mythological characters and rich proverbial statements.
Blake died in poverty in 1827 and is buried alongside Daniel Defoe and john Bunyan in London's Bunhill Fields. His poem Jerusalem, written as the preface for Milton's A Poem, was set to music and has been adopted as an alternative National Anthem. Blake's Tiger is probably the most anthologized poem in English Literature.
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