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The Fly (poem)
"The Fly" is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection ''Songs of Experience'' in 1794. The poem Interpretation Blake printed the poem with the text set in the branches of trees, an image of a nurse and a toddler in the foreground, and a girl with a racket about to hit a shuttlecock in the background. G. S. Morris notes that "the lines 'Till some blind hand / Shall brush my wing' seem to follow the feathered shuttlecock directly into the little girl's racquet". The poem catches the narrator in an act of thoughtlessness that leads to the contemplation of the act and its implications. The fly suffers from uncontrollable circumstances, just as the narrator does. This humbling simile has caused the narrator to move from thoughtlessness to thought, and, as "thought is life", from death to life, allowing the conclusion, "Then am I / A happy fly / If I live, / Or if I die", a conclusion to which Paul Miner comments: "Brain-dea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his " prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself". Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
