文档介绍：“I know that This World is a World of IMAGINATION & Vision.”
“The Nature of my Work is visionary imaginative.”

--- William Blake
William Blake (1757—1827)
Life
William Blake (1757—1827) was born and brought up in London.
Showing a precocious talent for painting as a child, Blake was sent to a drawing school; then at the age of 14 he was apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver.
In 1779, he began to earn his living as an engraver, missions from publishers both for book illustrations and for engravings from pictures.
Life
At the age of 24, Blake married Catherine Boucher. The marriage proved to be a lifelong happiness though there were difficulties for a time.
He lived a life of seclusion and poverty.
Blake's genius in poetry remained unknown in his lifetime; he was recognized only posthumously.
Representatives
Songs of Innocence 1789
《天真之歌》
Songs of Experience 1794
《经验之歌》
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 1790
《天堂与地狱的婚姻》
Blake began writing poetry at the age of 12.
Songs of Innocence(1809)
A lovely volume of poems, presenting a happy and innocent world, though not without its evils and sufferings.

The Lamb
Songs of Experience (1794)
Paints a different world, a world of misery, poverty, disease, war and repression with a melancholy tone.
A number of poems from the Songs of Innocence also find a counterpart in the Songs of Experience. For instance, the pure "Lamb" is paired with the flaming "Tyger."
Features of Blake’s poems
Blake writes his poems in plain and direct language. His poems often carry the lyric beauty with pression of meaning. He distrusts the abstractness and tends to embody his views with visual images.

Symbolism in wide range is also a distinctive feature of his poetry
Blake had a strongly visual mind; whatever he imagined, he also saw. For instance, he claimed that he saw a tree full of angels, visioned the ancient kings in Westminster Abbey, and drew "spiritual portraits" of the mighty dead. He believed he saw what