William Blake

A Divine Image

A Divine Image - context Summary

From Songs of Innocence and Experience

This brief poem appears in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience and presents a stark, ironic vision of human nature by personifying vices as bodily, almost sacred forms. Cruelty, jealousy, terror and secrecy are depicted as the human heart, face, form and dress, with industrial and furnace imagery that makes moral corruption feel literal and manufactured. It fits the collection’s exploration of experience and moral complexity.

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Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine, And Secresy the human dress. The human dress is forged iron, The human form a fiery forge, The human face a furnace sealed, The human heart its hungry gorge.

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