Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/205

 I remain'd. Soft he smil'd,

And I heard his voice mild,

Saying: 'This is my fold,

O thou ram, horn'd with gold,

Who awakest from sleep

On the sides of the deep.

On the mountains around

The roarings resound

Of the lion and wolf,

The loud sea and deep gulf.

These are guards of my fold,

thou ram, horn'd with gold!'

And the voice faded mild,

I remain'd as a child;

All I ever had known,

Before me bright shone:

I saw you and your wife

By the fountains of life.

Such the vision to me

Appear'd on the sea.

Mrs. Butts will, I hope, excuse my not having finished the portrait, I wait for less hurried moments. Our cottage looks more and more beautiful. And though the weather is wet, the air is very mild, much milder than it was in London when we came away. Chichester is a very handsome city, seven miles from us. We can get most conveniences there. The country is not so destitute of accommodations to our wants as I expected it would be. We have had but little time for viewing the country, but what we have seen is most beautiful; and the people are genuine Saxons, handsomer than the people about London. Mrs. Butts will excuse the following lines:—

'I have begun to work,' Blake writes; on the plates to a ballad of Hayley's, that is:—Little Tom the Sailor, written and printed for a charitable purpose. The project had been set going in Hayley's fervid head by an account his friend Rose the barrister gave of the boy's heroism and the mother's misfortunes, as celebrated in the poem. Hayley was at once to write a ballad, Blake to illustrate and engrave it, and the broadsheet to be sold for the widow's benefit to the poet's