I See the Four-fold Man

I see the Four-fold Man, The Humanity in deadly sleep And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow. I see the Past, Present and Future existing all at once Before me. O Divine Spirit, sustain me on thy wings, That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose; For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal steel, their terrors hang Like iron scourges over Albion: reasonings like vast serpents Infold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations. I turn my eyes to the schools and universities of Europe And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire, Wash'd by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth In heavy wreaths folds over every nation: cruel works Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic Moving by compulsion each other, not as those in Eden, which, Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve in harmony and peace.

time oppression ode dark

I See the Four-fold Man - meaning Summary

Imagination Against Cold Reason

Blake condemns a cold, mechanistic rationalism that has put humanity into a dead sleep. He envisions the Four-fold Man and sees Past, Present and Future simultaneously, pleading to a Divine Spirit to awaken Albion from paralysis. Figures like Bacon, Newton and Locke are cast as oppressive forces—tools of a doctrinaire reason that constrains imagination and spiritual life. The poem urges recovery of visionary unity against scientific and philosophical tyranny.

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