Below you will find two selections from Blake’s abandoned poem The French Revolution. Blake’s plan apparently was to write a poem on the events in France following the storming of the Bastille in July 1789. Only the first book is extant, if indeed any more of it was ever completed (despite what is reported on the title page). The radical printer Joseph Johnson published the first book as a pamphlet. Scholars speculate that Blake abandoned the project in order to concentrate on his illuminated books and the mythology that he was developing there as way to respond allegorically to the ongoing political turmoil. Given the legal troubles that Johnson, Paine, Thelwall, Godwin and others were facing through the mid-1790s, Blake may well have felt uneasy about writing about France and French politics directly. The mythology of the Prophecies and Visions were also better suited to Blake’s poetic and artistic ambitions than historical poetry. Still, it is worth comparing these lines to Blake’s other poems and those of his contemporaries, especially Williams and Thelwall.

 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

A Poem,

In Seven Books.

Book the First.

 

London:

Printed for J. Johnson, No 72, St Paul’s Church-yard.

 

MDCCXCI.

 

[Price One Shilling.]

 

Advertisement

The Remaining Books of this Poem are finished, and will be published in their Order.

 

Book the First

(Printed 1791)

 

THE DEAD brood over Europe: the cloud and vision descends over cheerful France;

O cloud well appointed! Sick, sick, the Prince on his couch! wreath’d in dim

And appalling mist; his strong hand outstretch’d, from his shoulder down the bone,

Runs aching cold into the sceptre, too heavy for mortal grasp—no more

To be swayèd by visible hand, nor in cruelty bruise the mild flourishing mountains.      

 

Sick the mountains! and all their vineyards weep, in the eyes of the kingly mourner;

Pale is the morning cloud in his visage. Rise, Necker! the ancient dawn calls us

To awake from slumbers of five thousand years. I awake, but my soul is in dreams;

From my window I see the old mountains of France, like agèd men, fading away.

 

Troubled, leaning on Necker, descends the King to his chamber of council; shady mountains

In fear utter voices of thunder; the woods of France embosom the sound;

Clouds of wisdom prophetic reply, and roll over the palace roof heavy.

Forty men, each conversing with woes in the infinite shadows of his soul,

Like our ancient fathers in regions of twilight, walk, gathering round the King:

Again the loud voice of France cries to the morning; the morning prophesies to its clouds.

 

For the Commons convene in the Hall of the Nation. France shakes! And the heavens of France

Perplex’d vibrate round each careful countenance! Darkness of old times around them

Utters loud despair, shadowing Paris; her grey towers groan, and the Bastille trembles.

In its terrible towers the Governor stood, in dark fogs list’ning the horror;

A thousand his soldiers, old veterans of France, breathing red clouds of power and dominion.

Sudden seiz’d with howlings, despair, and black night, he stalk’d like a lion from tower

To tower; his howlings were heard in the Louvre; from court to court restless he dragg’d

His strong limbs; from court to court curs’d the fierce torment unquell’d,

Howling and giving the dark command; in his soul stood the purple plague,

Tugging his iron manacles, and piercing thro’ the seven towers dark and sickly,

Panting over the prisoners like a wolf gorg’d. And the den nam’d Horror held a man

Chain’d hand and foot; round his neck an iron band, bound to the impregnable wall;

In his soul was the serpent coil’d round in his heart, hid from the light, as in a cleft rock:

And the man was confin’d for a writing prophetic. In the tower nam’d Darkness was a man

Pinion’d down to the stone floor, his strong bones scarce cover’d with sinews; the iron rings

Were forg’d smaller as the flesh decay’d: a mask of iron on his face hid the lineaments

Of ancient Kings, and the frown of the eternal lion was hid from the oppressèd earth.

In the tower namèd Bloody, a skeleton yellow remainèd in its chains on its couch

Of stone, once a man who refus’d to sign papers of abhorrence; the eternal worm

Crept in the skeleton. In the den nam’d Religion, a loathsome sick woman bound down

To a bed of straw; the seven diseases of earth, like birds of prey, stood on the couch

And fed on the body: she refus’d to be whore to the Minister, and with a knife smote him.

In the tower nam’d Order, an old man, whose white beard cover’d the stone floor like weeds

On margin of the sea, shrivell’d up by heat of day and cold of night; his den was short

And narrow as a grave dug for a child, with spider’s webs wove, and with slime

Of ancient horrors cover’d, for snakes and scorpions are his companions; harmless they breathe

His sorrowful breath: he, by conscience urg’d, in the city of Paris rais’d a pulpit,

And taught wonders to darken’d souls. In the den nam’d Destiny a strong man sat,

His feet and hands cut off, and his eyes blinded; round his middle a chain and a band

Fasten’d into the wall; fancy gave him to see an image of despair in his den,

Eternally rushing round, like a man on his hands and knees, day and night without rest:

He was friend to the favourite. In the seventh tower, nam’d the tower of God, was a man

Mad, with chains loose, which he dragg’d up and down; fed with hopes year by year, he pinèd

For liberty.—Vain hopes! his reason decay’d, and the world of attraction in his bosom

Centred, and the rushing of chaos overwhelm’d his dark soul: he was confin’d

For a letter of advice to a King, and his ravings in winds are heard over Versailles. (1-51)

 

‘Hear, O heavens of France! the voice of the people, arising from valley and hill,           

O’erclouded with power. Hear the voice of valleys, the voice of meek cities,

Mourning oppressèd on village and field, till the village and field is a waste.

For the husbandman weeps at blights of the fife, and blasting of trumpets consume

The souls of mild France; the pale mother nourishes her child to the deadly slaughter.

When the heavens were seal’d with a stone, and the terrible sun clos’d in an orb, and the moon

Rent from the nations, and each star appointed for watchers of night,

The millions of spirits immortal were bound in the ruins of sulphur heaven

To wander enslav’d; black, despress’d in dark ignorance, kept in awe with the whip

To worship terrors, bred from the blood of revenge and breath of desire

In bestial forms, or more terrible men; till the dawn of our peaceful morning,

Till dawn, till morning, till the breaking of clouds, and swelling of winds, and the universal voice;

Till man raise his darken’d limbs out of the caves of night. His eyes and his heart

Expand—Where is Space? where; O Sun, is thy dwelling? where thy tent, O faint slumb’rous Moon?

Then the valleys of France shall cry to the soldier: “Throw down thy sword and musket,

And run and embrace the meek peasant.” Her Nobles shall hear and shall weep, and put off

The red robe of terror, the crown of oppression, the shoes of contempt, and unbuckle

The girdle of war from the desolate earth. (205-222)