‘I have no name;I am but two days old.’What shall I call thee?‘I happy am,Joy is my name.’Sweet joy befall thee!Pretty joy!Sweet joy, but two days old.Sweet joy I call thee:Thou dost smile,I sing the while;Sweet joy befall thee!
Public domain. This passage is in the public domain. William Blake died in 1827, more than 70 years ago, and the work was first published in 1789. You can copy, print, read aloud or sell it without asking permission; a credit is kind but not required. The text is copied word for word from the Project Gutenberg edition linked here.
Sweet dreams, form a shadeO’er my lovely infant’s head!Sweet dreams of pleasant streamsBy happy, silent, moony beams!Sweet Sleep, with soft downWeave thy brows an infant crown!Sweet Sleep, angel mild,Hover o’er my happy child!Sweet smiles, in the nightHover over my delight!Sweet smiles, mother’s smiles,All the livelong night beguiles.
O brave new worldThat has such people in ’t!
My heart leaps up when I beholdA rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began;So is it now I am a man;So be it when I shall grow old,Or let me die!The Child is father of the Man;And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,Hath had elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar:Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory do we comeFrom God, who is our home:
You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
We keep adding passages and collections. Leave your email and we’ll tell you when something new lands.
Optional. One short email per new collection, and nothing else.