The Divine Image

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, All pray in their distress, And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is God our Father dear: And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart; Pity, a human face; And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form. In Heathen, Turk, or Jew! Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, There God is dwelling too.

Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, Tarquin and Lucrece, and his Sonnets, occasioned it to be said by a contemporary, that, 'As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous honey-tongued Shakespeare.' These poems, now little read, were favorite studies of Mr. Blake's early days. So were Jonson's Underwoods and Miscellanies, and he seems to me to have caught his manner, more than that of Shakespeare in his trifles. The following song is a good deal in the spirit of the Hue and Cry after Cupid, in the Masque on Lord Haddington's marriage. It was written before the age of fourteen, in the heat of youthful fancy, unchastized by judgment. The poet, as such, takes the very strong liberty of equipping himself with wings, and thus appropriates his metaphorical costume to his corporeal fashion and seeming. The conceit is not unclassical; but Pindar and the ancient lyrics arrogated to themselves the bodies of swans for their august residence. Our Gothic songster is content to be encaged by Cupid; and submits, like a young lady's favorite, to all the vagaries of giddy curiosity and tormenting fondness.

How sweet I roamed from field to field, And tasted all the summer's pride, Till I the prince of love beheld, Who in the sunny beams did glide!

He showed me lilies for my hair, And blushing roses for my brow; He led me through his gardens fair, Where all his golden pleasures grow.

With sweet May dews my wings were wet, And Phoebus fired my vocal rage; He caught me in his silken net, And shut me in his golden cage.

He loves to sit and hear me sing, Then, laughing, sports and plays with me; Then stretches out my golden wing, And mocks my loss of liberty.

The playful character ascribed to the prince of love, especially his wanton and fantastic action while sporting with his captive, in the two last stanzas, render it probable that the author had read the Hue and Cry after Cupid. If so, it had made its impression; but the lines could scarcely have been remembered at the time of writing, or the resemblance would have been closer. The stanzas to which I especially allude, are these.

Wings he hath, which though ye clip, He will leap from lip to lip, Over liver, lights, and heart, But not stay in any part; And, if chance his arrow misses, He will shoot himself, in kisses.

Idle minutes are his reign; Then the straggler makes his gain, By presenting maids with toys, And would have ye think'em joys: 'Tis th' ambition of the elf, To have all childish as himself.

The two following little pieces are added, as well by way of contrast, as for the sake of their respective merits. In the first, there is a simple and pastoral gaiety, which the poets of a refined age have generally found much more difficult of attainment, than the glitter of wit, or the affectation of antithesis. The second rises with the subject. It wears that garb of grandeur, which the idea of creation communicates to a mind of the higher order. Our bard, having brought the topic he descants on from warmer latitudes than his own, is justified in adopting an imagery, of almost oriental feature and complexion.