William Blake - an English Poet

For one poet in particular, an English poet that is popular amongst our history of poets today would be William Blake (1757-1827), even though he was scarcely known in his time period according to EncyclopeadiaBritannica.com. For starters, Blake is remembered as one of the major romantic poets that became apart of the romanticism movement in the 18th/19th European century. As for his writings, Blake's writings are often misinterpreted because of the difficulty of complexion, mostly because of the personal visions that he provides.

Some influences that were attached to Blake begins with the fact that he lived in the era of the revolutionary times. These were times that he witnessed London being depleted due to Britain's war with France. Blake was scarcely known simply because of his differences in his "radical" religious and political ideas, in which he did not believe in nature within religion but rather that man was mystical according to poets.com. These beliefs were common because he was forced to witness poverty throughout this imperialistic time period. Along with being a poet, Blake was also an engraver, artist, and visionary. His prophetic poetry and visual art led to a lot of criticisms which helped him to influence many people such as William Butler Yeats and William Rossetti. After Blake's death, he became widely known for his symbolism for the issues of his time. He became apart of the "free love" movement helped to culminate such issues as marriage being slavery and the removal of sexually related activities. He also had a major impact on the feminist progression movement, through which such authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft whom Blake admired.

As for Blake's writings, they were mostly difficult to understand because of his visionary aspects that he included in his writings. He was influenced by Milton, who he similarly copied his idea of an unrhymed pentameter epic. According to poets.com, Blake's regular themes consisted of lost innocence and political/religious restraints on humans. The poems "Cradle song", "Jerusalem", "The Little Black Boy", "Love's Secret", and a "Poison Tree", Blake uses completely different styles in which he criticizes the imposition of religious/social morality on human depiction separated with good and love. Regardless, all of these poems follow different rhyme schemes and ideas. The poem "Cradle Song" uses the religious views of A baby, more particularly Jesus, to expand on the purity and physical complexion. Blake briefly describes the baby while sleep using a lullaby type style. In the poem "Jerusalem", Blake uses rhetorical questions to bring about his point, and quickly moves into meaning by setting a stand. "The Little Black Boy" uses a narration and analogies in which the character is developed. As for the poems "Love's