Using the fantastic Blake Archive online so I can read Blake's engraved poetry in the format he produced it in. The Wm Blake Archive is a magnificent resource, although it suffers from the law that the site design of websites is always inversely preportional to the quality of its content.Blake seems to've had a rather droll disposition. The first six plates of There is No Natural Religion (c. 1788) proceed in a neat, step-wise fashion with six statements of sense perception in the best tradition of Locke (e.g. "Man's desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perciev'd.") THEN, Blake restarts the Roman numbering and releases this bombshell: "Man's perceptions are not bound by organs of perception, he perceives more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover." But this seems to refute everything he just said! Then the I recognize the different logical loop holes he placed in Series A: "None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions", and "Man cannot naturally Percieve but through his natural or bodily organs" (my italics). From there, Series B continues in a signature Blakean vein. Possible favorite line: "the bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels."
Songs of Innocence (('89) as distinct from Songs of Innocence *and Experience* ('94). Number of poems depicting spiritual innocence. Seem pastoral, but in a much more earthy, solid way than your feathery, rococo kind of pastoralism - this is Edenic in the sense of complete & whole innocence, and not simply idyllic. Engravings show moderate improvement over There is No Natural Religion & All Religions Are One. (Perhaps due to the startlingly innovative move from 5.3x4.5 cm to 11x7 cm plates).
Book of Thel ('89). First engraved prophetic work (second actual prophetic work after Tiriel).
*n.b. Big Three of Blake studies: S. Foster Damon, Northrop Frye, David V. Erdman.
