ABSTRACT

The currents and cross-currents of fashion that lead a poet to the choice of a certain subject at a certain time tend to be forgotten, leaving the work itself in isolation, as if produced by miracle alone. According to the Neoplatonists, the rape of Proserpina represents the descent of the soul and “its union with the dark tenement of the body.” There is no mention of the northern gate in the poems of Lyca, nor of the sign of Cancer. The fable of Proserpina, Taylor says, “is properly of a mixed nature, or composed from all the four species of fables, the theological, physical, animastic, and material.” There is a canceled plate that was actually used in one of two copies of Songs of Experience before Blake substituted the poem To Tirzah, which shows a majestic androgynous figure upborne by six winged cherubs.