People who write are apt to be peculiar, especially people who write poetry, and certainly one of the most peculiar of them all was that 18th century Englishman named William Blake.

In addition to writing poetry, Blake engraved pictures, and in addition to engraving pictures, he saw visions. When he was a small boy he scared the wits out of his father by telling him how, when he was taking a walk one afternoon, he suddenly came across a tree filled with angels. And then, a little later, at supper one evening, he caught everybody off balance when, without any warning at all, he pointed his finger at the dining room window and announced that he saw pressed against it the great and inscrutable face of God. On that occasion, his father apparently decided that things had gone far enough, because he gave his son a sound beating.

William continued to see visions all his life. Needless to say, many people thought that he was mad, and they could have mustered considerable evidence to support that view. Mad or not, Blake nonetheless found in his visions the inspiration for a series of poems and pictures the best of which provide us with some of the uncanniest insights into the nature of things that we have ever had from anybody.

I intend to refer to one of these images — the etching pictured above in its actual size — when I preach the Baccalaureate sermon for Saint Andrew’s Episcopal School here at Saint Francis on June 4th.