The Literature Network - William Blake's Immortal Hand and Eye

William Blake's Immortal Hand and Eye

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 19960512
Author:Michael Dirda

BLAKE

By Peter Ackroyd

Knopf. 399 pp. $35

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) may be the most perplexing major figure in English literature. On the one hand, "The Tyger" is -- according to William Harmon in The Top 500 Poems -- the single most popular short lyric in our language. Young children learn to chant its haunting singsong in elementary school: "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright/ In the forests of the night." A dozen of Blake's other poems -- including "London," "The Mental Traveller," "The Chimney Sweeper" -- are nearly as well-known, and a great many of his lines will be familiar even ...

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