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Featured Poem: The Clod and The Pebble by William Blake

Written by The Reader, 3rd July 2017

We're diving back into William Blake's collection for this week's Featured Poem - The Clod and the Pebble.

Born in November 1757, William Blake was an English poet, painter and printmaker who, although unrecognised in his own lifetime, has become a key figure in the history of poetry and art of the Romantic Age.

His contemporaries thought Blake mad but the creativity and philosophical undercurrents of his work has been widely celebrated for centuries.

The Clod and the Pebble

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet;
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:
"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight;
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."
William Blake

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