What a gorgeous gnomic triumph this poem is! Blake wrote these poems and illustrated them; his wife Catherine helped him water-color the images and he sold books of them for a pittance; they are of course priceless today (and always were).

Lot's Notes:

• "Charter'd" = "owned by the King," the streets yes of course, but even the river.

• Chimney sweepers were child laborers, valued because they could climb up sooty flues to break loose the creosote, at God knows what cost to their health.

• The "Harlot's curse" is syphilis, and children born to mothers infected with it were often blinded at birth.
<img src="https://alwaysquestionauthority.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/william-blake1.jpg">"The Marriage hearse" indeed.

But Francis Bacon wrote all his plays!

From Brooke Gladstone's wonderful |feature |on Shakespeare last April (the month of his birth):

Some educators believe that high school is already too late to meet the Bard. Students are too self-conscious to ask for the meanings of words and phrases and, with college looming, they’re too worried about grades. So when’s the right time?

We’d argue, right now. It’s his 400th death day and, even if it’s all Greek to you – his phrase – even if he sets your teeth on edge – also his – he is in your mouth. As the great British journalist Bernard Levin once noted, if you’ve ever played fast and loose or refused to budge an inch, believed the game is up or that the truth will out, ever been tongue-tied or hoodwinked, made a virtue of necessity or seen better days, had too much of a good thing, lived in a fool’s paradise or given the devil his due, even if you bid me good riddance, but me no buts, for you are quoting Shakespeare.