ABSTRACT
I think William Blake was a great writer. He was also a great believer. He is often described as a visionary poet, a term also applied to others, such as Wordsworth, who are regarded as members of the English Romantic movement. In Blake’s case, however, the term has a particular meaning because from childhood to the end of his life he had visions, in the sense that Joan of Arc or Bernadette of Lourdes had visions; he insisted on their perceptual reality and the validity of their content. He had a one-person religion, or perhaps two-person, as Catherine Blake, his wife, played Echo to his Narcissus in a thoroughgoing way.
