In Williams Blakes poem The Divine Image he confines the characteristics of the Romantic period through his emotions, imagination, and human expressiveness.
Per. 3
Mr. Harville
The Divine Image
Romantic poetry expresses the self – originating and emotional poetry of the Romantic period. In William Blake’s life, he had an ever so mind changing an occurrence. After William Blake became married, he had an altercation with a man, John Schofield. After Schofield pressed charges and Blake was acquitted, Blake carried the burden of the threats and curses from the trial with Schofield. The trial disturbed Blake’s imagination and forced his style to change to radical religious, moral, and political opinions. Blake simply used poetry and art to express his new found “Spiritual sense” (Abrams 1408). Blake uses his new spiritual sense to radically interpret the Bible. After analyzing “The Divine Image” one can clearly conclude that this poem comes from the Romantic period. In Williams Blake’s poem “The Divine Image” he confines the characteristics of the Romantic period through his emotions, imagination, and human expressiveness.
In Romantic poetry, a poet must write from his emotion ultimately creating self-originating poem. In “The Divine Image” Blake incorporates the virtues of “Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love” (Blake 1). Blake senses that these virtues describes God and also “Is man, his child and care” (Blake 8). The virtues describe qualities of not only God but actual qualities of humans also. Each human conclusively strives to obtain all these qualities. The aspiration to acquire these traits leads us closer to God because “where mercy, love and pity dwell, their God is dwelling as well” (Blake 15). Where each human achieves these virtues each human also finds God. Blake elaborates with the feeling that “Mercy has a human heart, Pity, a human face, And love, the human form divine, And peace. The human dress.” (Blake 10-12). He displays that these four virtues have characteristics of humanity also. Blake’s emotions lead him to feel that the ideal human models God. Blake believes that man holds the same virtues that each human beholds God as. God obtains all these virtues and Blake says that each virtue has a human characteristic to show that God and humans are alike.
