Milton - The Prophetic Books of William Blake

A dead poet comes back to undo the harm done in his name, and walks straight into the foot of the man writing the poem. This is the strangest and most personal of Blake's epics. William Blake (1757-1827) wrote, etched and printed Milton himself between 1804 and about 1810, words and design made together, at Felpham in Sussex and afterwards in London. In it John Milton, a hundred and thirty years dead and troubled by his own work, comes down from eternity to face his errors, enters Blake at the ankle, and is at last reunited with Ololon, the female half of himself he had denied. Around them move Los, the blacksmith who hammers out time, the Bard whose song sets everything going, and the shifting figure of Satan. Only four copies survive, which is part of why the poem took so long to reach ordinary readers. Its preface has done rather better: the lines beginning 'And did those feet in ancient time', with their dark satanic mills and their chariot of fire, were set to music by Hubert Parry in 1916 and are sung now as Jerusalem. Milton belongs beside Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion and The Four Zoas among the late prophecies, and of the three it comes closest to saying plainly what Blake believed he was for.