This image appears near the beginning of Blake’s illustrations to “The Descent of Odin” in Thomas Gray’s Poems (1972 facsimile). It depicts the Norse god literally riding “down the yawning steep” on a horse, with drawn sword, shield out, and armor covering his body. This poem “from the Norse Tongue” was actually translated by Gray from Latin. It is part of a number of Norse legends dealing with the death of Odin’s son, Balder, and Odin’s effort to determine whether Balder’s death can be averted. Here Blake also shows Odin encountering the hideous “Dog of Darkness.” The adjacent page introducing the poem in Blake’s illustrations is startlingly light and whimsical compared to this dark image
This image is from Blake’s illustrations to “A Long Story,” a comic tale of magic and tangled social relationships in Thomas Gray’s Poems (1972 facsimile). A woman lunges away in fear at the sight of a translucent, ghostly figure on the right who bars the entrance to a chapel door. This alarming “sentry” has flames coming out of his eyes, and is “enough to scare ye,” as the next page of the poem attests.
This image is from Blake’s illustrations to “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” which is included in Thomas Gray’s Poems (1972 facsimile). The woman wearing a crown appears to be the queen of the “painful family of death” in the line marked with Blake’s X. She has snakes wrapped around her legs and torso and flames at her feet. The tortured figures around her represent the loss and dark times that will inevitably have to be faced by the happy youth at the start of the poem.
This image continues Blake’s illustrations to “The Progress of Poesy,” a long Pindaric ode in Thomas Gray’s Poems (1972 facsimile). It has a cold, ice-mountain setting where a figure walks, covered in a wolf skin and playing a trumpet. From the lines Blake marked with an X, it is clear what is going on: “In climes beyond the solar road, / Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, / The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom / To cheer the shiv'ring native's dull abode.”
This image is from Blake’s illustrations to “The Progress of Poesy,” a long Pindaric ode in Thomas Gray’s Poems (1972 facsimile). It depicts Hyperion in a burst of light emerging from the sun. Hyperion holds a bow and arrow at the ready, as he is about to cast war upon the forces of “sickly” Night and various human ills.
On the title page to Blake’s illustrations to Thomas Gray’s Poems (1972 facsimile), a swan is flying in a deep blue sky. A man is riding on the back of the swan, holding the reigns and reaching for a lyre. He can be interpreted to be “The Pindaric Genius” behind Gray’s work, because a note on the verso of this image refers specifically to the “Genius receiving his Lyre” (symbolically, a sign that he is a poet).
This work by the Trianon Press is a facsimile of a unique copy made by Blake between 1797 and 1798. Its reproduction in three volumes was purchased for Union College by the Friends of the Library.
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