October 2, 191i). 
tAND AND WATER 
BLAKE'S SONGS OF BATTLE. 
•a 
By Anna 
Thou, to whose fury the nations are 
But as dust I maintain thy servanfa right. 
Without thine aid, the twist-ed mail and spear 
And forged helm and shield of seven-times l^eaten brass 
Are idle trophies of the vanquisher. 
Wlien confusion rages, when the field is in a flame. 
When the cries of blood tear horror from heaven, 
And yelling Death runs up and down the ranks. 
Let Liberty, the chartered right of Englishmen, . 
Won by our fathers in many a glorious field, 
Enerve my soldiers; let Liberty 
Blaze in each countenance, and fire the battle. 
The enemy fight in chains, invisible chains, but heavy; 
Their minds are fettered; then how can they be free ? 
TO read lines like the.se is like passing out into 
the starlitaif. For it is in tl»e essence of aclassic 
to convey a sense of space, of calm strength, 
of inevitableness, and the classic touch so 
' often sought, vainly souglit, in our great 
Universities, in the montmients of Rome, and even on 
the very .sod of Parnassus, was the familiar possession 
of the poor hosier's son whose chief library was the 
Bible, and whose travels took place in the dream world 
only. Blake, who was born in 1757. was a young man 
when the Americans fought for their independence, and 
he lived till Waterloo was an ancient tale, dying in 1827, 
but nothing that he heard or saw in his long life taught 
him to love war of which he yet writes so nobly! In one 
of his later poems he expressed this opinion : 
Nought can deform the human race 
Like to the armourer's iron brace; '" ' 
The soldier armed with sword and gun 
Palsied strikes the summer sun. 
He would have gold and gems kept for tlic plough, and 
cares nothing for the pomp and circumstance of battle, 
although the furniture of war was still picturesque when 
Blake wrote. What he is interested in is the courage, the 
self-sacrifice, the mental elation of men who challenge 
Death. That death means for all noble souls a joyful 
translation Blake was firmly persuaded, having seen the 
spirit of his beloved brother clapping its hands for joy of 
its release in the very moment of dissolution. Moreover, 
he had been a.ssisted and guided by the dead brother 
and could never think of the grave' but as he himself ' 
drew it, as the gate of life. .So he would say on the eve 
of battle : j 
Bind ardent hope upon your feet like shoes, 
Put on the robe of preparation ! 
The table is prepared in shining heaven, 
The flowers of immortality are blown ; 
Let those that fight fight in good stead fa.stnes8. 
And those that fall shall rise in victory. 
The hope that he holds out is not that of escape from a 
sudden, violent, and early death, but hope of the soul's 
speedy escape from " this prison house " of the body. 
Still Blake, in his drama " King Edward the Third," 
makes Sir Walter acknowledge, " Yet death is terrible, 
though borne on angels' wings." The following lines, 
intended as a prologue to the play, convey in the most 
masterly manner a picture of the horror of a battlefield, 
together with the thrill, the tension that make the horror 
awful rather than .sordid : 
Oh, for a voice like thunder, and a tongue 
To drown the throat of war ! When the senses 
Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness, 
Wlio can stand ? When the souls of the oppressed 
Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand ? 
When the whirlwind of fury comes from the throne 
Of God, when the frowns of His countenance 
Drive tlie nations together, who can stand ? 
When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle. 
And sails rejoicing in the flood of death ; 
When Boula are torn to everlasting fire. 
And fiends of hell rejoice upon the slain. 
Oh! who can stand? Oh ! who hath caused this? 
Oh I who can answer at the tbione of Gud i 
Bunston. ' ^ 
The.se pictures of Sin " clapping his broad wings," 0/ 
the " oppre.s.sed souls " taking part in the conflict, and 
of fiends rejoicing over the slain, reminds us that, like 
Rossetti, Blake worked in two spheres. The lines 
quoted above might .serve as a sketch for one of his 
own wonderful designs. Nor is it only when the subject 
is terrible that his ver.se has this pictorial quality, 'llie 
minstrel in the victorious camp sings : 
Our sons shall rise from thrones in joy, 
Each one buckling on his armour; Morning 
Shall be prevented by th*ir swords gleaming, 
And Evening bear their .song of victory. 
Their towers shall be built upon the rocks, . 
Their daughters shall sing surrounded with shining . 
spears. '''' 
Liberty shall stand upon the cliffs of Albion, 
Casting her blue eyes o'er the green ocean; -• 
Or towering stand Upon the roaring waves, ■ '■ '/ 
Stretching her mighty spear o'er distant lands; . 
AVhile with her eagle wings she covereth 
Fair Albion's shore and all her families. 
One could not wish a better design for a drawing of the 
genius of Britain than that figure of Liberty looking 
out over the .sea with open, friendly blue eyes and.eagle 
wings for far flight and strong defence. 
The wars which Blake knew were apparently caused 
by the folly of George the Third and the ambition of 
Napoleon, but while he hated ambition — -■ 
The strongest poison ever known 
Came from Caesar's laurel crown 
—yet he could not believe but that ultimately the wrath 
of iTian should praise God. War was to him a discipline 
and a judgment. On one occasion, writing directly to 
Britons, he describes the Angel of Fate turning the 
lots with mighty hands and casting them out upon the 
darkened earth, and calls for preparation : 
The arrows of Almighty God are drawn ! 
Angels of Death stand in the lowering heavens ! 
Thousands of souls must seek the realms of light. 
And walk together on the clouds of heaven! 
Prepare, prepare. 
Soldiers prepare! Our cause is Heaven's cause; 
Soldiers prepare ! Be worthy of our cause : 
Prepare to meet our fathers in the sky: 
Prepare, O troops that are to fall to-day ! 
Prepare, prepare. 
Blake recogni.ses that the soldier in action niay be 
braced, thrilled, awed, rapt into .something little less 
than an ecstasy, but he recognises, too, that for the 
citizen called from his home and family, for maids and 
mothers, for old men and young children, war is indeed 
a " red scourge " : 
The widowed virgins weep beneath thy shades. 
Tho aged fathers gird themselves for war; 
The sucking infant lives to die in battle; 
The weeping mother feeds t.'m for the slaughter; 
The husbandman doth leave his bending harvest; 
Blood cries afar ! The land doth sow itself ! 
That " the glittering youth of Courts must gleam in 
arms " can hardly have seemed, even to one so kindly 
as Blake, an unmitigated calamity. For Blake was no 
fanatic. He knew that not the fact of war but the spirit' 
behind the war is the great matter. To-day probably' 
his own mood, as that of many a brave .soldier, would 
rather be that mood of Dagworth in his play : 
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 tlie meadows, 
That murmur down their pebbly channels, and 
Spend their 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 marinei<s shall use the flut« and viol : ^ 
And rattling guns and slack and dreary war • : • 
Shall be uu more. 
15 
