Excerpt from "Proverbs of Hell" by Sir Blake...

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

Expect poison from the standing water.

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of
instruction,

The eagle never lost so much time as when he
submitted to learn of the crow.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of
truth.

It is right it should be so'
Men was made for Joy and Woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro the world we safely go.
Joy and Woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.

- William Blake

(image: from the Book of Job, Blake's work)

Little Black Boy

William Blake

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh! my soul is white.
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say:

"Look on the rising sun, -there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learned the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear his voice
Saying: `Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!' "

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy:
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.