And Then There Was a Fairy (Posted By: Makenna Childers)

There was a man in an enclosed area similar to an underground cave that has five windows that light him. Each window has a separate meaning:

“..thro' one he breathes the air;
Thro' one, hears music of the spheres; thro' one, the eternal vine
Flourishes, that he may receive the grapes; thro' one can look.
And see small portions of the eternal world that ever groweth;
Thro' one, himself pass out what time he please, but he will not;
For stolen joys are sweet, & bread eaten in secret pleasant.”

And outside this enclosed place, on a streaked tulip sat a Fairy singing and mocking this man. The Fairy did not realize that he could be seen and was being watched, for when he stopped, the man came out of the trees and like a boy catches bugs in a jar, he scooped the Fairy up in his hat. The Fairy knowing he was trapped told the man that he is now his master, and shall do whatever is he is commanded to do. The man said “Then tell me, what is the material world, and is it dead?” The Fairy laughed and told the man that he would write a book on flower leaves. On the way home, the man collected wild flowers. When they got to the house, they went into the parlor and sat at the desk. The man grabbed his pen to prepare to write, and the Fairy dictated “EUROPE”.

              So technically the Fairy is telling the prophecy and all the man really has to do is write down what is being said. Thus, the fairy is the symbol for Blake’s thoughts and emotions, causing me to wonder Why a Fairy? What is the thought process that led Blake to think of a Fairy as the storyteller of the prophecy instead of having him write it? Although Blake is the author, he is not the voice of the story. By doing this, he puts a better image in the reader’s head, a picture of a happy and cheerful mystical creature like a fairy telling this dark story to help make an impact on the reader’s emotions. He just as easily could have kept himself as the writer, the reader would feel like Blake had a way with words, but was slightly insane. But Blake was a visionary and saw the world in a special way, the way most Romanticism poets saw the world, but some may have thought he was crazy. Instead he was a man that stood for what he believed in and let his imagination take him for an amazing journey through life.