A Memorable Fancy

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments.

When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now perceived by the minds of men, & read by them on earth.

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five? 

Here's a funny little fragment from Blake's book. The speaker is walking in hell, and he's finding that there's a lot to learn there.

The speaker of this "Memorable Fancy" is enjoying walking through hell, which happens to be…full of wisdom? Who knew? It may seem strange, until we remember that Blake was a rabble-rouser who liked to provoke his readers and who was pretty radical in his anti-religious views.

It's really hard to classify this gem in terms of genre. Do we read this as a poem, for instance, or as a story? Or as a prose poem? The whole of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is made up of fragments like this. Oh, and there are illustrations and paintings in there, just to add to the confusion.

That's why this work is a perfect example of the way that the Romantics liked to experiment with genre and poetic form.