William Blake: A Divine Image

A Divine Image


Just one of my favourite poems; one of the poems I read in my youth that caused a shift in my perception, in this case of divinity and creation. If we are made in "His" image - what a reflection. And yet, Blake does not deinigrate the reality of humanity, even while rejecting the sentimentality of Christian theology on the point. Humanity, in all its gripping reality, is divine; without ever needing to be derivitive.

A Divine Image

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

William Blake

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