Life and Works of William Blake (MS fragment) Dante Gabriel Rossetti [Untitled copies of two Blake poems] William Blake 1880 corrected copy manuscript DGR Delaware Art Museum Commentary
Introduction

This is DGR's fair copy, made in 1880, of quatrains 1 and 3 the poem he printed under the title “Love and Deceit” in the second volume of the revised 1880 edition of Alexander Gilchrist's <hi rend="i">Life of William Blake</hi> (II. 128, “Ideas of Good and Evil”). DGR copied out the full text in another manuscript.

DGR has drafted a pencil copy of another epigram that he printed in the 1880 volume (but not in 1863), the verses labeled there “Fragment No. XVIII”. The materials are taken from the manuscript notebook of Blake's that DGR had bought in 1847.

Textual History: Composition

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception History

Iconographic

Printing History

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

follow each other DGR's note in left margin to indicate the placement of the stanzas. O lapwing thou fliest around the heath Nor seest the net that is spread beneath Why dost thou not fly among the corn fields? They cannot spread nets where a harvest yields. 1 Love to faults is always blind, Always is to joy inclin'd, Lawless winged & unconfined, And breaks all chains from every mind. x x x x x 3 There souls of men are bought & sold And milk-fed infancy for gold And youths to slaughter houses led And maidens beauty for a bit of bread.