Richard Herne Shepherd, Poetical sketches by William Blake now first reprinted from the original edition of 1783 (1868)
“ We must go back to apology for the less happy efforts of a poet who in his best things has hardly fallen short of the large utterance of the Elizabethan dramatists, the pastoral simplicity of Wordsworth, the subtlety and fire of Shelley, and the lyrical tenderness of Tennyson. ”
Richard Herne Shepherd, Poetical sketches by William Blake now first reprinted from the original edition of 1783 (1868)
“ The "Winter," though it opens vigorously, soon falls into the pseudo-Ossianic grandiloquence, of which there is also a taint in several other pieces, and the last three lines, stumbling and staggering, remind us irresistibly of the same incongruous blending of sublime and ludicrous images (going on halting feet) in Turner's unfortunate "Fallacies of Hope." ”
Richard Herne Shepherd, Poetical sketches by William Blake now first reprinted from the original edition of 1783 (1868)
“ Of the opening poems addressed to the four Seasons, we may say that the first three, though marred here and there by irregularities of metre, have a wealth of imagery and felicity of expression worthy of some of the finest things in Keats and Shelley and Tennyson. [1] There are lines too in them which stand out rememberable for ever, and haunt the ear with their melody. ”
