Selections from the Symbolical Poems of William Blake. Edited by Frederick E. Pierce

William Blake was home-schooled as a boy, for his father feared his fiery temper would lead to a whipping at public school. This intensity of spirit remained within Blake throughout his life, coloring his politics, philosophy, religion, poetry, and artwork. Although his passion earned him little money or recognition (except from other young artists and writers) while he was alive, in death he was renowned as a poet, painter, and engraver, inspiring Modernist authors even as he was accepted as an archetypal English Romantic.