Blakes poem, what does it mean

I think that this poem is compairing love and deceit....but showing how closly they are linked. They are a bit of opposites. The first line: love to faults is always blind....is that great idea that we wear rose colored glasses when we are in love - we see not the faults of those around us. That with love - there is no stoping you. You feel like you can do anything....or that you would do anything for love.

Deceit needs to be kept a secret...and it consumes people. Deceit and lies grow...and multiply. The more lies you have- the more you have to lie. Then you begin to spin a web of deceit which will chain you down. You will become a prisoner of your own lies. However, when wearing the rose colored glasses...sometimes Deceit doen't look like deceit- and therefore it gets confused.

Re: Blakes poem, what does it mean


That's what I think.

I also think he is saying that love is an ecstatic and illuminating force - that it blasts preconceptions and the blinders of common reality from our eyes - and frees us - although in the power of this experience, it is possible we shall be deceived and hurt - there is risk in this powerful force:

"lawless winged and unconfined"

I think he is not only speaking of romantic love here, but also of the joys of the love of nature, other beings, ideas - enthusiasm and risk generally - and of the transcendence of the spiritual experience of ecsatsy and love.

It gives us wings (is there an echo here of the common image of moths to a flame - I also think of John Donne's famous poem of transcendent love, The canonization:

( http://search.able2know.com/About/3709.html )

"Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,"


He contrasts this with the cautious, grey, confined, dim world of ordinary existence - of life without the ecstatic and radical force of surrender to love -

Blake is big on the fetters of the customary thought and religion - "mind-forg'd manacles" as he calls them - and the corrupting effect of "civilisation" on human innocence.

Have a look at Songs of Innocence and Experience, for instance.

Here is a critical introduction to Blake which you may like to have a look at - it explores many of his themes and looks at other poems:

http://www.wwnorton.com/introlit/poetry_blake9.htm

Blake is a joy - have a look at more of his work!

Love to faults is always blind.
Love even when you know the faults of someone.
Always is to joy inclined.
Love brings joy even with the faults.
Lawless, winged and unconfined.
Love has no boundries or restraints.
And breaks all chains from every mind.
Love overcomes all.

Love is forgiving, always sees beauty and the positive. Love is not formal and rule-obsessed, but spontaneous and overflowing. Love isn't obsessed with an exact system of law. Love trusts. Love is present.

But deceit goes with self-righteousness. False religion accuses. True religion is the love of human beings, the seeing of reality as infinite and holy.

Blake likes to contrast courage with cunning. Love is brave and open, maybe a little sloppy. Cunning is secretive, self-obsessed, selfish in the narrow abstract way.

These are just improvised thoughts. Blake is worth a close reading generally. Especially his annotations, which is where he is most direct, most clear. I think he's underrated.

This poem may tell us what the difference between love and deceit is, but it certainly does not tell us how to tell whether something is the one or the other. Blake seems to be confusing the question, what is the difference? with the question, how can we tell the difference?