Silent, Silent Night

Silent, Silent Night

Original Text
William Blake, Poems, ed. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1863).
2Quench the holy light
3Of thy torches bright.
4For possess'd of Day
5Thousand spirits stray
6That sweet joys betray.
7Why should joys be sweet
8Used with deceit
9Nor with sorrows meet?
10But an honest joy
11Does itself destroy
12For a harlot coy.

Notes

1] This was first published in 1863 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his edition of Blake's poems, which formed the second volume of Alexander Gilchrist's posthumous Life of William Blake. It was edited from a notebook in Rossetti's possession, now known as the Rossetti MS., containing a great number of sketches, draft poems, polemical prose, and miscellaneous writings, which Blake kept by him for many years. As the only textual authority for many of these poems is a foul draft, some of them are partly editorial reconstructions. Thus in the notebook the first stanza of "Never seek to tell thy love" has been marked for deletion, and "seek" has been altered to "pain," while the final quatrain of "I heard an Angel singing" is an editorial arrangement first made by Swinburne. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1863
RPO poem Editors
Northrop Frye
RPO Edition
3RP 2.288.
Rhyme