The Book of Thel

William Blake · 1789 CE · Poem · English · Romantic

The youngest of the daughters of the Seraphim keeps to the river and asks why anything so briefly beautiful should have been made at all. A lily, a cloud, a worm and a clod of earth each answer her out of their own dying, and none of the answers holds for long. She is given leave to enter the country of the unborn dead and to stand at her own grave plot.

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Closest analogues

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