Excerpt from Studies in PoetryIn other ways, more immediately connected with the history of poetry in England, he was also a forerunner, striking into the light and air high up on the mount Parnassus new fountains of song which were in the future to become rivers of fresh emotion, thought, and imagination. It is fascinating to stand at the birthplace of a great stream and think of the splendour, use, and comfort it has been to the children of men and the streams of fresh song which Blake smote from the rock have, like one of the noble rivers, brought joy, festivity, awakening, and novelty to the imagination and the soul of man.His earliest work preceded the work of Cowper and Burns. The Poetical Sketches were written and finished by 1777. But they were not published till 1783. His Songs of Innocence were set forth in 1789, his Song: of Experience in 1794. Even the last, then, preceded the first volume of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads by four years. The new elements he brought into poetry were taken up by Wordsworth and thrown for the first time into clear definition and challengeable form in the Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth did not take them from Blake. They arose spontaneously in his soul. They were in the air. Nor did Wordsworth represent all the new aspects of thought and emotion Blake created in the world of song. The political, religious, and mystic elements of Blake's poetry were felt by other poets than Wordsworth, and put into clearer form than Blake gave to them. But Blake sketched them all, he began the picture which others finished. He is like one born out of due time.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.