‘A Slumber on the banks of the Ocean’

Abstract

For a time Felpham was all that Blake might have hoped for when he arrived. The London he had left now seemed a dark dungeon, a ‘Web’ and ‘Veil’ that resisted ‘every beam of light’, or, as his wife put it, a ‘ter¬rible desart’.¹ Although the countryside was not too far from the city’s centre and its scenes could still be glimpsed from within its developing wilderness of brick and stone, it was an exhilarating experience to have fields all about him now; still more to have light from the sea close at hand. They had passed through a country which they found ‘most beau¬tiful’ to reach a cottage which exceeded their expectations. To Flaxman he wrote uninhibitedly to express his belief that Felpham was ‘a sweet place for Study, because it is more spiritual than London’:

Heaven opens here on all sides her golden Gates her windows are not obstructed by vapours … voices of Celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard & their forms more distinctly seen…²