http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/persephone.html 

 http://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/hades.html 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hades 

You Were Wearing Blue

the explosions are nearer this evening
the last train leaves for the south
at six     tomorrow
the announcements will be in a different language

i chew the end of a match
the tips of my finger and thumb are sticky

i will wait at the station and you
will send a note, i
will read it
     it will be raining

     our shadows in the electric light

when i was eight they taught me real
writing
     to join up the letters

listen you said i
preferred to look

       at the sea      everything stops there at strange angles

only the boats spoil it
making you focus further

 

             - Tom Raworth

 

 

 

Well here you are
at the edge of the abyss...

at the beginning of infinity

heaven or hell

an afterlife
or a nothingness

forgiveness
or an eternity of suffering ?

 

 

On the day of his death, Blake worked relentlessly. Eventually, it is reported, he ceased working and turned to his wife, who was in tears by his bedside.
Beholding her, Blake is said to have cried, "Stay Kate! Keep just as you are – I will draw your portrait – for you have ever been an angel to me."
Having completed this portrait (now lost), Blake laid down his tools and began to sing hymns and verses.
At six that evening, after promising his wife that he would be with her always, Blake died.

George Richmond (a member of the Blake-influenced group known as "The Ancients")
gives the following account of Blake's death in a letter to Samuel Palmer (an English landscape painter, etcher and printmaker):

"He died ... in a most glorious manner.
He said He was going to that Country he had His entire life wished to see & expressed Himself Happy,
hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ — Just before he died His Countenance became fair.
His eyes Brightened and he burst out Singing of the things he saw in Heaven."

Catherine paid for Blake's funeral with money lent to her by Linnell (an English landscape painter associated with William Blake).
He was buried five days after his death – on the eve of his forty-fifth wedding anniversary – at Dissenter's burial ground in Bunhill Fields,
where his parents were also interred.
Present at the ceremonies were Catherine, Edward Calvert (an English printmaker and painter), George Richmond (a member of
the Blake-influenced group known as "The Ancients"), Frederick Tatham and John Linnell (an English landscape painter associated with William Blake).

Following Blake's death, Catherine moved into Tatham's house as a housekeeper.
During this period, she believed she was regularly visited by Blake's spirit.
She continued selling his illuminated works and paintings, but would entertain no business transaction without first "consulting Mr. Blake".
On the day of her own death, in October 1831,
she was as calm and cheerful as her husband, and called out to him "as if he were only in the next room, to say she was coming to him,
and it would not be long now".

---------------------------------

Upon her death, Blake's manuscrīpts were inherited by Frederick Tatham, who burned several of those which he deemed heretical or too politically radical.
Tatham had become an Irvingite,
one of the many fundamentalist movements of the 19th century, and was severely opposed to any work that smacked of blasphemy.

Sexual imagery in a number of Blake's drawings was also erased by John Linnell.

Blake is now recognized as a saint in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The Blake Prize for Religious Art was established in his honour in Australia in 1949.
In 1957 a memorial was erected in Westminster Abbey, in memory of him and his wife.

(source)

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

"I do not behold the outward creation... it is a hindrance and not action." 
William Blake--painter, engraver, and poet--explained why his work was filled with religious visions rather than with subjects from everyday life.
Few people in his time realized that Blake expressed these visions with a talent that approached genius.
He lived in near poverty and died unrecognized.
Today, however, Blake is acclaimed one of England's great figures of art and literature and one of the most inspired and original painters of his time.
...
At 25 Blake married Catherine Sophia. He taught her to read and write and to help him in his work. They had no children.
They worked together to produce an edition of Blake's poems and drawings, called
Songs of Innocence. Blake engraved both words and pictures on copper printing plates.
Catherine made the printing impressions, hand-colored the pictures, and bound the books. The books sold slowly, for a few shillings each.
Today a single copy is worth many thousands of dollars.
...
Blake's fame as an artist and engraver rests largely on a set of 21 copperplate etchings to illustrate the Book of Job in the Old Testament.
However, he did much work for which other artists and engravers got the credit.
Blake was a poor businessman, and he preferred to work on subjects of his own choice rather than on those that publishers assigned him.

(source)

...
Every Night & every Morning
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morning & every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight

Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
...

Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day

                  - William Blake

 

Last night I saw the sword Excalibur
It flew above the cloudy palaces
And as it passed I clearly read the words
Which were engraved on its blade
        And one side of the sword said Take Me
        The other side said Cast Me Away

I met my lover in a field of thorns
We walked together in the April air
And when we lay down by the waterside
My lover whispered in my ear
        The first thing that she said was Take Me
        The last thing that she said was Cast Me Away

I saw a vision of my mother and father
They were sitting smiling under summer trees
They offered me the gift of life
I took this present very carefully
        And one side of my life said Take Me
        The other side said Cast Me Away

 

- Adrian Mitchell

It's Feb. 23, 2007. And I have nothing to say, except documenting this date.