And did those feet in ancient time
walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
on England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant Land.
Jonah Gordon Brown named it as his favourite hymn; since then it has been repeatedly banned in dioceses, churches and services throughout England. Southwark has just announced that it is ' Not to the glory of God'.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
11 comments:
I wonder if he likes it because it was intended to mean that it was impossible to imagine, in the hellish poverty of industrial England, that anything holy might happen.
Odd that this most Conservative hymn was in fact a call to revolution and somewhat apt for a socialist trying desperately to disguise the fact
Hallo HG
Peter Ackroyd's biography of Blake says that the automated Albion Mill in Blackfriars Road, Lambeth was burnt down in March 1791, shortly after Blake had moved to Lambeth. The millers were delighted and the factory "remained a black ruined shell until 1809". Blake would have walked past it every day on his way into London.
It's useful to say what is meant when talking about socialism.
There's the socialism where wealth is taken from the rich and redistributed for social consumption among the poor as well as the rich, in the form of universal benefits like clean water, road and transport systems, social peace, public health etc. That's the one everybody feels is a good thing and the argument is just about how much of it.
Then there's the socialism where wealth is taken from the poor and redistibuted to the poorer, again with some universal benefits enjoyed by the untouched rich as well (see above, particularly social peace), and that's the one practised for much of the 20th century, and generates increasing dissent as the wealth transfers among the poor become unbearable and the social nature of the transferred consumption slides into the private consumption of socially funded resources; this is what the Labour party and its outriders do.
And there is the socialism practised by New Labour, where wealth is transferred neither to the poor, or among the poor, but from all to corporations via debt, and the use of state power.
The pageantry and the words and the driving force and any good, all come from the first; the drudgery, the economic inefficiency and the greyness of life come from the second; and authoritarianism, the setting solid of inequalities in life chances and caste access to positional goods and services (if there are positional services, I mean things like privileged travelling facilities by reserved lanes, privileged access to better health care, education etc, by rule not governed by price), are created by he third.
I quite like Blakean socialism. The second two sorts make me see red.
You're back N? I was hoping you'd run a micro-political view of activity in your constituency. Do you think there's a big threat from the BNP in quite tranquil parts of quite well-off England? I rather fear so.
I suppose we can only build imagery out of what we see ourselves, S, (or internalised from others) but isn't that what poets do - universalize and magnify individual insights, using 'outsights', so that we can all look at a reality otherwise felt but not embodied?
I have a very vague memory from somewhere way back in the mists of time of reading somewhere or other that this hymn was written as a clue (in the first two lines) to the fact(?) that St Paul(?) on his various journeys actually came to what is now Britain. Maybe just some idle speculation but perhaps some historian or theologian can expand?
Blake's attempts at epic failed, but his short pieces coruscate beguilingly, and dangerously. His rejection of Reason puts him into the wildest class of revolutionary - he'd quite possibly have approved of the Red Army Fraction - but that sort of thing always ends badly. It's not enough for your heart to be in the right place.
Part of the difficulty with New Labour is its rejection of strict logic and law in favour of vague definitions employed by bureaucratic power. It is no longer possible to day "I have done X, or not done Y, and therefore am safe from prosecution". Instead, we get woolly aspirant language on one side of the paper, and carte blanche on the other. The French Revolution isn't over yet. Aldous Huxley was right to say that we should concentrate on means, not ends.
Liberty is secured within clear boundaries (good fences make good neighbours); tyranny allows the Power to penetrate the boundaries at will. Liberty is sustained by agreed rules and procedures; tyranny focuses on outcomes and abridges procedure if thwarted. Law is blown down by the ever-conflicting winds of popularity, fanned by demagogues. At the end, after the wreck, they'll tell us it's what we said we wanted.
A review I've just found of E P Thompson on Blake and contemporary religious radicalism here:
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj62/cox.htm
Nomad: ... possibly not only Joseph of Arimathea, but Jesus:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1260001
S: Thanks for that. Nice to see the old brain has not quite gone yet and that I did not dream that memory, although the detail was not quite right. But as I said, it really was a very long time ago that I heard/read this story.
That most beautiful of ` Christian images, the agnus dei, stands in pleasant pastures, woolly leg curled around the standard of a red cross on a white ground.
'And was the holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen?' Well, yes, actually; wouldn't be a bit surprised to meet Him again, out on the `fells, or carrying his banner in south western pastures.
As a child I was horrified by the excruciating images of Christ; I would blank them out and think of Blake's Lamb of God - though I didn't know that for England it was
his.
I must think over your remarks about reason and passion, S, and try not to want 'coruscate beguilingly and dangerously' as my phrase.
I`m afraid HG politics are on the back burner at the mo. Momentous events are unfolding chez Newmania. The tribe , shall we say , increaseth.
It's amazing you can look at all, N, with all the excitement. You can't know if you are coming or going. Such joy.
Post a Comment