Controlling Passions

[Tick_Dawk]

Has anyone read William Blake? One of my favorite poems by him is The Sick Rose:

O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

You’ve also got A Poison Tree and The Tiger and The Lamb and all other kinds of great poems. One of his great philosophies (which can be seen in this poem) was that to repress your emotions and your passions was the worst sin of all.

If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, if we repress our emotions, we end up feeling really guilty, or we end up doing something stupid. I mean, we shouldn’t repress emotions–we should express them in a constructive manner. For Blake, he wrote poetry; for others, I guess you could exercise or something.

I guess you may all think I’m nuts, but what do you think, anyway?

 

[bogeydogg]

Well repressing emotions and not behaving sinfully are not necessarily the same thing. We are told to obey the law of God not to be emotionless automatons.

I guess I’m saying, as pertains to what?

 

[Et_Cetera]

This is one of my favorite poems:

Ah! sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire;
Where my sunflower wishes to go.

-William Blake

I adore the imagery. Another poet that I like, Allen Ginsberg, once said that he had an aural hallucination of Blake reading this poem. I find it particularly interesting as Ginsberg said that he was not using any drugs at the time of the incident. You might also like the works of John Riley and Justin Stevenson. They are two poets in my area who often deal with such themes as those explored in the above poetry.