Monday, September 29, 2014

William Blake

So I was on Amazon looking for a cheap version of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience by my boy William Blake for my Kindle.

Amazon had a freebie, as they often do with the classics, but there were so many one-star reviews warning about layout, missing elements, etc., that I stepped away.

I found one for a buck, but that one had this for a cover ...

What does William Blake have to do with the Metropolis?  We're not talking Fritz Lang here.  This isn't Brett Easton Ellis.

Exhibit A is "Introduction" from Songs of Innocence ...

INTRODUCTION

Piping down the valleys wild,
   Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
   And he laughing said to me:
‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’
   So I piped with merry cheer.
‘Piper, pipe that song again.’
   So I piped: he wept to hear.
‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
   Sing thy songs of happy cheer!’
So I sung the same again,
   While he wept with joy to hear.
p. 2‘Piper, sit thee down and write
   In a book, that all may read.’
So he vanished from my sight;
   And I plucked a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
   And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
   Every child may joy to hear.

p. 3

I repeat, this isn't Brett Easton Ellis.  Nor Jay McInerney.  No Bolivian marching powder here, consumed in the bathrooms of Odeon.

What, one wonders, are they thinking.  And don't get me started on Milton.

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