Page:William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911).djvu/38

— 38 — Memorable Fancy opens with the words "The Prophets Isaiah and Ezechiel dined with me" and somewhat further now we find written "After dinner I asked Isaiah etc." I need not point out the ridiculousness of representing spiritual visions of the prophets as taking dinner; but yet the same principle which Blake followed here has been honoured in the Blessed Damozel.

Further we find here instances of Blake's art as a painter influencing the poetry of D. G. Rossetti. Blake made illustrations for the Book of Job. These belong to his most splendid engravings. On plate 15 of this series the morning stars are depicted, represented as an endless row of angels singing, with hands uplifted for joy. Under the engraving is written: "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Rossetti admired this engraving highly and we find the image of the "singing stars" in the Blessed Damozel: "The stars sang in their spheres" (stanza 9.) "Her voice was like the voice the stars Had when they sang together". (stanza 10.) There was another engraving of Blake's, which suggested to Rossetti the seven stars, the Blessed Damozel wears in her hair, as we can read in the opening stanza of this poem. "And the stars in her hair were seven." (stanza 1.) In a large engraving of Blake we find these seven stars adorning the hair of a beautiful figure of a woman, probably a soul admitted into eternity. This engraving forms the title-page of Night III of Young's Night-Thoughts, a work which Blake illustrated.

And at last we can trace Blake's influence in the eighteenth stanza of the Blessed Damozel. Here the handmaidens of the virgin are enumerated, and the series of these melodious names, which do not all of them represent saints, seem to have been inserted for the sake of euphony only.