Judging by E. J. Pratt's lone reference to William Blake—the facetious epigram about the tiger and the lamb in The Witches' Brew—the dean of Canadian poets can have little conscious sympathy with the great English mystic of 150 years ago. Yet of all writers before Pratt, none—in the deeper and more profound sense—bore him closer resemblance…. I am not trying to establish Blake as a major "influence" on Pratt. Indeed, I strongly suspect that their similarities are more fortuitous than causal.

Though Blake is often difficult to read, and Pratt always easy, the style of the two poets has, none the less, much in common: a style based upon architectural language, the sheer might and glory of sentences piled up in a pyramid of sound and fury, raising worlds on fire by the power of the word, and destroying them by a turn of phrase...