Oh, the cunning wiles that creep
     In thy little heart asleep! 
     When thy little heart shall wake,
     Then the dreadful light shall break.

     THE LITTLE BLACK BOY

     From ‘Songs of Innocence’

     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
       Are 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.

THE TIGER

     From ‘Songs of Experience’

     Tiger!  Tiger! burning bright
     In the forests of the night,
     What immortal hand or eye
     Framed thy fearful symmetry?

     In what distant deeps or skies
     Burned that fire within thine eyes? 
     On what wings dared he aspire? 
     What the hand dared seize the fire?

     And what shoulder, and what art,
     Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 
     When thy heart began to beat,
     What dread hand formed thy dread feet?

     What the hammer, what the chain,
     Knit thy strength and forged thy brain? 
     What the anvil?  What dread grasp
     Dared thy deadly terrors clasp?

     When the stars threw down their spears,
     And watered heaven with their tears,
     Did he smile his work to see? 
     Did He who made the lamb make thee?

CHARLES BLANC

(1813-1882)

We have few personal details of Charles Blanc.  We know that he lived in a luminous world of form and thought, a life in harmony with his work; we have books containing his conception of art; we know that art was his one absorbing passion:  and this should satisfy us, for it was his own opinion that all which does not tend to illustrate an artist’s conception of art is of but secondary importance in his life.