William Blake: Jesus Was All Virtue

By Jack Joseph Smith

William Blake: "Jesus was all virtue, and thus ; acted from impulse, not Prom ruless" Romantic: space goes beyond the classic duty of ideaa As we walk high with thoughts the bounty of its meaning closes’ in on us No matter the vision of responsibility when we walk in the hands of the land : Our birth cries.to zo beyond social needs that tempt us with the imageof substance~ George Washington aa~a young man looking across the Atlentic: With his long hair down was also where his reasons were for wondering The strain of blood on the pillars of historic: time remembered’ The pen held tight for days and after e Peeling of wine” But +o run with the wind high in the medow To naked go through good and evil in crossing down to the depths of nature This is the power thet renches the soul and opens life to trust and vibration This is the place where meaning no longer. belongs to desire

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

Using Blake's dictum that Jesus acted from impulse rather than rules, the poem contrasts romantic vision with classic duty, moving through Washington's youth to a final embrace of nature, trust, and the power that wrenches the soul free of desire.

The poem reads as a manifesto for Romantic openness, grounding its argument in American revolutionary history and the physical image of running naked through good and evil.

Claude

'William Blake: Jesus Was All Virtue' takes its epigraph from Blake - that Jesus 'acted from impulse, not Prom ruless' - and builds a credo arguing that 'Romantic space goes beyond the classic duty of ideaa'. The poem claims that 'as we walk high with thoughts' meaning 'closes in on us', and that 'Our birth cries to go beyond social needs / that tempt us with the image of substance'. It pivots through 'George Washington as a young man / looking across the Atlentic' with 'his long hair down', placing 'The strain of blood on the pillars / of historic time' and 'The pen held tight for days' beside the Blakean impulse. It closes with its central article of faith: 'To naked go through good and evil / in crossing down to the depths of nature... This is the place where meaning / no longer belongs to desire'.

This is the collection's most direct statement of poetics, using Blake's antinomian Jesus to license a romanticism of impulse over rule and nature over social obligation. Smith's argument moves by deliberate elevation - walking 'high with thoughts', 'high in the medow', running 'with the wind' - then reverses direction at the end, 'crossing down to the depths of nature', so that transcendence is figured as descent rather than ascent. The Washington passage grounds Blakean abstraction in an American revolutionary body: long hair, blood on the pillars, the pen 'held tight for days / and after a Peeling of wine', binding artistic and political risk together. The final claim is austere and almost ascetic for so romantic a poem - that real meaning is reached only when it 'no longer belongs to desire', stripping appetite from revelation. Light OCR noise ('ideaa', 'Atlentic', 'renches the soul') leaves a few words provisional, but the poem's thesis and its downward turn into nature are unmistakable.