"The God of War is drunk with blood; The Earth doth faint and fail: The stench of blood makes sick the Heav'ns; Ghosts glut the throat of Hell!"
His feeling for England recalls old John of Gaunt's speech:
"Lord Percy cannot mean that we should suffer This disgrace: if so, we are not sovereigns Of the sea--our right, that Heaven gave To England, when at the birth of nature She was seated in the deep; the Ocean ceas'd His mighty roar, and fawning play'd around Her snowy feet, and own'd his awful Queen."
"Then let the clarion of War begin; I'll fight and weep, 'tis in my country's cause; I'll weep and shout for glorious liberty. Grim War shall laugh and shout, decked in tears, And blood shall flow like streams across the meadows, That murmur down their pebbly channels, and Spend their sweet lives to do their country service: Then shall England's verdure shoot, her fields shall smile, Her ships shall sing across the foaming sea, Her mariners shall use the flute and viol, And rattling guns, and black and dreary war, Shall be no more."
Later on the War spirit in him, without diminishing, underwent a change. It is still England's green and pleasant fields that he loves, and he still longs for glorious liberty. This shall be effected by the building of Jerusalem. But as the root of the evil is in man, the weapons of his warfare become spiritual. Casting aside the rattling guns, he shouts:
"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 and pleasant land."
For War breeds hate and every evil thing. Until we arouse ourselves and fight like warriors the evil that is in ourselves, there can be no glorious liberty, whether for England or any other nation of the world.
The _Poetical Sketches_ were a failure. Mrs Mathew had generously tried to help, but her influence was not wide.
A magnificent opportunity had come to the Blue-stockings, and to Mrs Montagu in particular, who with all her money and wide influence, which she was always ready to use for her needy friends, might have helped quite incalculably when Blake most needed it, and earned our undying gratitude. Yet we must be just and not blame them for their lost opportunity. Their significance lies in the fact that they objected to being perfect dunces like the rest of their English sisters, and so they made a bold dash to understand the things that men understand. They were not the first learned women the world had seen. The ladies of the Italian Renaissance could have given them points all round. Their work was that of restoration and not revolution, and that was more than sufficient to occupy their thoughts and energies without their peering into the new world that was at work in Blake. When whiffs of the new spirit blew on them from Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, and Hume, they were chilled and shocked, and thanked Heaven that in Dr Johnson there was a champion who knew all about the new and stoutly maintained the old. That was sufficient for them. Unfortunately they lived at a time when Society was more than usually artificial and woman suppressed, and the odd contrast between them and their sisters made them appear to men somewhat as monsters, like singing mice or performing pigs. The charge of being a Blue-stocking must always brand with a stigma, but happily now that women are establishing their right to meet men on an equality, the charge need never be made again.