Doc Yoder's Notes
The Book of Thel by William Blake (1789)

Throughout the poem, note the similes; they both describe the character's self-perception, and provide the connection between the episodes.

Also, note the poem's insistence that Thel is a "virgin."

Plate i
Thel's motto: suggests that things have their own appropriate natures.

I: The Lilly (pl.1-2)

• Thel is the youngest daughter of Mne Seraphim in a pastoral setting
• Thel goes on a quest for knowledge
• Thel compares herself to "watry" images, as well as to images of things that are very transient
• The Lilly identifies herself as a "watry weed" and explains that even though she is weak, she is still visited by him "that smiles on all" (1:19), who comforts her, assuring her that after she "melts" she shall flourish
• Thel decides that she is not like the lilly whose flowers are cropped by lamb, but that she is like the cloud
• The Lilly tells her to talk to the cloud

II: The Cloud (pl. 3)

• The cloud is male
• Thel says that she is like the cloud because she "pass[es] away"
• The cloud tells her, "when I pass away / It is to tenfold life," that he mates with the dew and they bear food for flowers
• Thel says that she is not like the cloud; she experiences life, but does not feed anything, and she will die only to be "food for worms" (3:23)
• The cloud says then, "How great thy use" (3:26); everything that lives not alone, "lives not for itself" (3:27), and to show her this, he calls up the worm

III: The Worm / Clod of Clay (pl. 4-5)

• The Worm appears as an infant who can't speak, so the Clod of Clay speaks as the Worm's mother
• The clod echoes the Cloud's remark that "we live not for ourselves" (4:10), and that even though she is cold and dark, she is wed to him "that loves the lowly" and that they have children together; This is an allegory for Christ's becoming human, becoming a man of clay (like Adam)
• Thel says that she didn't know this, and that's why she wept; she wept because she would have to "lay me down in thy cold bed" (the grave)
• The clod says that Thel may enter into "my house" (Death? Life? Earthly existence? The grave?) and return

IV: The grave (pl. 6)

• Thel enters the land of the dead, "A land of sorrows & of tears" (6:5)
• Thel comes to her own grave and hears a voice of sorrow from it
• The voice, using Petrarchan imagery, equates death with sex and asks why the senses must lead to death
• Thel, the "Virgin," shrieks and flees back to the Vales of Har from which she came