Blake's politics 2

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What I really wanted to post, for the role it came to have
decades after Blake's death, is "Jerusalem". To understand its mixture
of religious and political significance you not only need to speak English
but to be English, and I suspect really, northern English.

It is the socialist alternative to Land of Hope and Glory, without a hint
of chauvinism, but full of democratic patriotism (a very rare and tricky
combination in England). You have to have expanded your lungs and sung
as hard as you can, collectively with scores, preferably hundreds of others
of socialist persuasion, knowing it is comparatively unimportant whether you
are materialists or deists, in what is at once a political and a religious
ceremony.

If a future socialist England can tolerate even a hint of
religious feeling, "Jerusalem" will be sung for ever.


Chris, London




And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seem?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hill?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant Land."


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