July 2011
In 2011 Larry taught a short enrichment course in Blake at the Senior Learning Institute of the College of Central Florida. He concluded the course with this precis of Blake's Milton.
In the second half of his career Blake had largely dropped his preoccupation with the Old Testament God and in favor of the New Testament God. His first large prophetic poem, Milton begins with a famous poem called Jerusalem that latter became the theme song of the British Labor party; used to sing it as a hymn.
This material is autobiographical and written in the honeymoon phase of his new spiritual life. Blake's full meanings yields only to intensive study, but from the beginning there are thrilling lines to delight and inspire the reader. In his esoteric language Blake describes for us what has happened to him, and nothing could be more engrossing for the reader interested in the life of the spirit and in Blake. The relationship of this story to the myth described above should be obvious. But Milton is more real than the previous material because Blake has lived it and writes (and sketches) with spiritual senses enlarged and tuned by his recent experience of grace.
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