"And did those feet in ancient time" is a poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton: A Poem in Two Books, one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date of 1804 on the title page is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed .Cox, Michael, editor, The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, "1808", p 289, Oxford University Press, 2004, Today it is best known as the hymn "Jerusalem", with music written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. The famous orchestration was written by Sir Edward Elgar. It is not to be confused with another poem, much longer and larger in scope and also by Blake, called Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion.
It is often assumed that the poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that Jesus, in the unknown years before his ministry, visited what is now England, accompanied by Joseph of Arimathea.Icons – a portrait of England. Icon: Jerusalem (hymn) Feature: And did those feet? Accessed 7 August 2008 However, according to British folklore scholar A. W. Smith, "there was little reason to believe that an oral tradition concerning a visit made by Jesus to Britain existed before the early part of the twentieth century". Instead, the poem draws on an older story, repeated in Milton's History of Britain, that Joseph of Arimathea travelled alone, after the ascension of Jesus, to preach to the ancient Britons. The poem's theme is linked to the Book of Revelation, particularly 's reference to the Song of Moses () describing God's vengeance upon the "destroyers of the earth" (), by means of God's "sword" and "arrows (), and also by the "horses and chariots" and winds of Israel (, ), alluded to in and , respectively. By contrast, "Jerusalem" represents what must be preserved from these earth-destroying forces. Christians, following , have long seen Jerusalem as a metaphor for Christendom, not just in Heaven, but spiritually anywhere on Earth.
In the most common interpretation of the poem, Blake asks whether a visit by Jesus briefly created heaven in England, in contrast to the "dark Satanic Mills" of the Industrial Revolution. Blake's poem asks four questions rather than asserting the historical truth of Christ's visit. The third verse is interpreted as an exhortation to create an ideal society in England, whether or not there was a divine visit.
Text The original text is found in the preface Blake wrote for inclusion with Milton, a Poem, following the lines beginning "The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid: of Plato & Cicero, which all Men ought to contemn: ..."
Blake's poem
Beneath the poem Blake inscribed a quotation from the Bible:
"Dark Satanic Mills"
The phrase "dark Satanic Mills", which entered the English language from this poem, is often interpreted as referring to the early Industrial Revolution and its destruction of nature and human relationships.Lienhard, John H. 1999 Poets in the Industrial Revolution. The Engines of Our Ingenuity No. 1413: (Revised transcription) That view has been linked to the fate of the Albion Flour Mills in Southwark, the first major factory in London. The rotary steam-powered flour mill, built by the firm of Boulton and Watt, could produce 6,000 bushels of flour per week. The factory could have driven independent traditional millers out of business, but it was destroyed in 1791 by fire. There were rumours of arson, but the most likely cause was a bearing that overheated due to poor maintenance with flour dust being highly explosive.
London's independent millers celebrated, with placards reading, "Success to the mills of Albion but no Albion Mills."ICONS – a portrait of England. Icon: Jerusalem (hymn) Feature: And did those feet? Accessed 7 August 2008 Opponents referred to the factory as satanic, and accused its owners of adulterating flour and using cheap imports at the expense of British producers. A contemporary illustration of the fire shows a devil squatting on the building.Brian Maidment, Reading Popular Prints, 1790–1870, Manchester University Press, 2001, p.40 The mill was a short distance from Blake's home.
Blake's phrase resonates with a broader theme in his works; what he envisioned as a physically and spiritually repressive ideology based on a quantified reality. Blake saw the cotton mills and collieries of the period as a mechanism for the enslavement of millions, but the concepts underpinning the works had a wider application:Alfred Kazin: Introduction to a volume of Blake. 1946
Another interpretation is that the phrase refers to the established Church of England, which, in contrast to Blake, preached a doctrine of conformity to the established social order and class system. Stonehenge and other megaliths are featured in Milton, suggesting they may relate to the supposedly oppressive power of priestcraft in general. Peter Porter observed that many scholars argue that the "[mills] are churches and not the factories of the Industrial Revolution everyone else takes them for".Peter Porter, The English Poets: from Chaucer to Edward Thomas, Secker and Warburg, 1974, p.198., quoted in Shivashankar Mishra, The Rise of William Blake, Mittal Publications, 1995, p.184. In 2007, the Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright, explicitly recognised that element of English subculture when he acknowledged the view that "dark satanic mills" could refer to the "great churches".N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham (23 June 2007) "Where Shall Wisdom be Found? " Homily at the 175th anniversary of the founding of the University of Durham. ntwrightpage.com In similar vein, in 1967 the critic F. W. Bateson stated "the adoption by the Churches and women's organizations of this anti-clerical paean of free love is amusing evidence of the carelessness with which poetry is read".Quoted in
An alternative theory is that Blake is referring to a mystical concept within his own mythology, related to the ancient history of England. Satan's "mills" are referred to repeatedly in the main poem, and are first described in words which suggest neither industrialism nor ancient megaliths, but rather something more abstract: "the starry Mills of Satan/ Are built beneath the earth and waters of the Mundane Shell...To Mortals thy Mills seem everything, and the Harrow of Shaddai / A scheme of human conduct invisible and incomprehensible".Blake, William, Milton: A Poem, plate 4.
"Chariots of fire" The line from the poem "Bring me my Chariot of fire!" draws on the story of 2 Kings 2:11, where the Old Testament prophet Elijah is taken directly to heaven: "And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." The phrase has become a byword for divine energy, and inspired the title of the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, in which the hymn "Jerusalem" is sung during the final scenes. The plural phrase "chariots of fire" refers to 2 Kings 6:17.
"Green and pleasant land" Blake lived in London for most of his life, but wrote much of Milton while living in a cottage, now Blake's Cottage, in the village of Felpham in Sussex. Amanda Gilroy argues that the poem is informed by Blake's "evident pleasure" in the Felpham countryside. However, local people say that records from Lavant, near Chichester, state that Blake wrote "And did those feet in ancient time" in an east-facing alcove of the Earl of March public house.
The phrase "green and pleasant land" has become a common term for an identifiably English landscape or society. It appears as a headline, title or sub-title in numerous articles and books. Sometimes it refers, whether with appreciation, nostalgia or critical analysis, to idyllic or enigmatic aspects of the English countryside."Eric Ravilious: Green and Pleasant Land," by Tom Lubbock, The Independent, 13 July 2010.. Retrieved 7 January 2011 In other contexts it can suggest the perceived habits and aspirations of rural middle-class life."This green and pleasant land," by Tim Adams, The Observer, 10 April 2005.. Retrieved 7 January 2011 Sometimes it is used ironically,"Green and pleasant land?" by Jeremy Paxman, The Guardian, 6 March 2007.. Retrieved 7 January 2011 e.g. in the Dire Straits song "Iron Hand".
Revolution Several of Blake's poems and paintings express a notion of universal humanity: "As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)". He retained an active interest in social and political events for all his life, but was often forced to resort to cloaking social idealism and political statements in Protestant mystical allegory. Even though the poem was written during the Napoleonic Wars, Blake was an outspoken supporter of the French Revolution, and Napoleon claimed to be continuing this revolution. Spartacus Educational (schoolnet.co) – Accessed 7 August 2008 The poem expressed his desire for radical change without overt sedition. In 1803 Blake was charged at Chichester with high treason for having "uttered seditious and treasonable expressions", but was acquitted. The trial was not a direct result of anything he had written, but comments he had made in conversation, including "Damn the King!".
The poem is followed in the preface by a quotation from Numbers 11:29: "Would to God that all the Lords people were prophets." Christopher Rowland has argued that this includes
everyone in the task of speaking out about what they saw. Prophecy for Blake, however, was not a prediction of the end of the world, but telling the truth as best a person can about what he or she sees, fortified by insight and an "honest persuasion" that with personal struggle, things could be improved. A human being observes, is indignant and speaks out: it's a basic political maxim which is necessary for any age. Blake wanted to stir people from their intellectual slumbers, and the daily grind of their toil, to see that they were captivated in the grip of a culture which kept them thinking in ways which served the interests of the powerful.
The words of the poem "stress the importance of people taking responsibility for change and building a better society 'in Englands green and pleasant land.
Popularisation
The poem, which was little known during the century which followed its writing, was included in the patriotic anthology of verse The Spirit of Man, edited by the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Robert Bridges, and published in 1916, at a time when morale had begun to decline because of the high number of casualties in World War I and the perception that there was no end in sight.
Under these circumstances, Bridges, finding the poem an appropriate hymn text to "brace the spirit of the nation [to] accept with cheerfulness all the sacrifices necessary," asked Sir Hubert Parry to put it to music for a Fight for Right campaign meeting in London's Queen's Hall. Bridges asked Parry to supply "suitable, simple music to Blake's stanzas – music that an audience could take up and join in", and added that, if Parry could not do it himself, he might delegate the task to George Butterworth.C. L.Graves, Hubert Parry, Macmillan 1926, p. 92
The poem's idealistic theme or subtext accounts for its popularity across much of the political spectrum. It was used as a campaign slogan by the Labour Party in the 1945 general election; Clement Attlee said they would build "a new Jerusalem". It has been sung at conferences of the Conservative Party, at the Glee Club of the British Liberal Assembly, the Labour Party and by the Liberal Democrats.
Setting to music By Hubert Parry
In adapting Blake's poem as a unison song, Parry deployed a two-stanza format, each taking up eight lines of Blake's original poem. He added a four-bar musical introduction to each verse and a coda, echoing melodic motifs of the song. The word "these" was substituted by "those" before "dark satanic mills".