ABSTRACT
No poem of William Blake's, except perhaps the notorious "Mental Traveller," is more dense and difficult than Europe a Prophecy. Europe is frustrating from beginning to end. It is frustrating in part because it looks at first as if it ought to be understandable: not very long, it has a fairly clear structure—the nesting of narratives in the Prophecy section—with a stirring climax, and it seems to be about the most important political event of the century, the French Revolution. "The French Revolution" seemed to celebrate as quite revolutionary enough the convening of the "Commons" in the Hall of Nations and their vote to remove the troops from Paris. The difference between Enitharmon's dreamy world of wistful gallantry and the real world of misery here below shows itself dramatically in plates 6 and 7, which give stark close-ups of famine and plague.
