William BLAKE

William Blake was born in November 28, 1757 in Soho, London.

He was a precocious child with a lively imagination and was reprimanded

by his mother when he said he was seeing visions: he said the prophet

Ezekiel and the archangel Gabriel spoke to him. His mother, Catherine

Wright Armitage, was a member of the Moravian Church, a progressive

proto-Protestant church established in Moravia, today's Czechoslovakia,

in 1457. As a child, William Blake was brought up with Moravian teachings

based on a new birth into the teaching of Christ, pacifism based on passive

resistance, missionary work, and music. Many of the poems in "The Songs

of Innocence and Experience"were influenced by Moravian hymns

that the child heard in church.

...

"The Angel that presided o'er my birth

Said, "Little creature, form'd of Joy & Mirth,

Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth."