This is the fourth installment of my series on William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” see here for background, missed a day so we’ll see if catching up is worth it.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
In poetry from this time and place, it’s usually safe to substitute Eternity with God, but either way the meaning is that the production of time, the lives lived, the deaths deathed? is what enriches the eternity bracketing it. Even if your vision is set on eternity, what happens and is built in time matters as well. Also I think you could narrow the advice to artistic because timelessness is usually found through embracing the timeliness of the work. John Hughes movies ARE the eighties for many people because they so thoroughly embrace the exact time and place they are set.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
I don’t think it takes a genius to crack this one. Work can put sorrows out of your mind, in exchange for immunity to a primary emotion, you become a buzzing bee that never stops working. Whether this advice is useful or not will depend on your situation.
The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.
This one feels like advice, like a statement of the nature of the universe, however it’s actually a value judgement. Time that flies is time spent wisely, while hours meted out by minute are never recalled as well spent. No one wishes they spent more time training, working, or attending appointments, but the empty eternal hours of summer afternoons are more precious than any metal could hope to pay for.
I guess it’s only appropriate that there a time theme to my makeup day
All wholsom (sic) food is caught without a net or a trap.
Blake himself wasn’t a vegetarian as far as I can tell (again with the caveat that we don’t have most of his more edgy work) but he was equally iconoclastic in other areas. This singular line feels like it could have more to say, but without context for what he calls wholesome or any clarification, it’s a straight value judgement, EXCEPT for the fact that he specifies net and trap and not rod and arrow. Meat that is caught through personal pursuit seems to be considered wholesome as well. I wonder if this applies to foraging and farming? I could speculate for paragraphs or move along.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
So be careful and rational when you are in danger, but also don’t have them out and laying around in a year of plenty. Much of Blake’s advice is about remembering to loosen our grips from time to time and enjoy the scenery. So don’t neglect number weight & measure, but when there is no need for them, do not continue to center them in your life and how you judge the apportionment of others. I do think this advice feels bittersweet in 2024 where weight and measure is king while the economy soars, meting out slices of prosperity in miser portions to anyone who isn’t feasting at the high table. But let’s not get political.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
Hoo boy, the only thing muddier than a star symbol is a bird symbol. Obviously whenever anyone with a classical education talks about “soaring too high” it’s got an Icarus thing happening. Here Blake is specifying natural flight, and how the birds cannot through their own power fly too high (though I doubt Blake was aware that the air gets too thin to generate lift so I’m not sure what danger he was afraid they would encounter) and how that also implies that if you are using something that doesn’t count as “your own” then there is a danger of flying too high. For Blake, Icarus did not own/understand/appreciate the operating of the wax wings, and, enjoying the surface delight, brought his own doom upon him. If you built and constructed the means of ascension (socially, professionally, physically) then you’ll be able to operate and maintain that new altitude without as much danger as someone who was just given those means with no ownership. Great advice, just very nuanced and prone to abuse.
Be good to each other, the eclipse has everyone all wonky, if it can make the tides weird it can mess with you.
Music:
Wheeler's Place 
1 Comment