Favorites?

What are your favorite Blake works?

MHH, definitely. It was the first of his works to really 'illuminate' itself to me.

I really enjoy the Continental Prophesies as well.

My favorite Blake work is still his illustrations to the book of Job, but of course his classics (because they speak to so many readers) are Songs of Innocence and Experience and Marriage of Heaven and Hell. My favorite Blake poem is "Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau," which he never got around to engraving (or publishing otherwise). In his prophecies, I have lots of favorite plates, but no one work --well, the older I get the more I think I understand (and exult in) Jerusalem.

"Mock on, Mock on Voltaire Rousseau," but I marvel at the poem's certainty regarding the biblical promises to Israel in that poem since at the time Blake wrote it (and he actually uses the word Israel) modern Israel was not in existence and Israel the ancient nation had been crushed and dispersed and the Zionist movement had not yet begun.

Well, EncompassedRunner, I guess we should keep in mind that Blake saw visions from childhood on and spoke with angels and the departed! Blake critics these days all recognize that he was a visionary, but not all explore what it means that he was a Christian visionary.
With regard to "Mock on, mock on," I think he's using Israel to refer to visionaries, people of Poetic Vision like himself, who could see infinity in a grain of sand, as opposed to rationalists and naturalists (e.g., Voltaire and Rousseau), who denied the reality of the imagination and, hence, were "blinded" by the sand (atoms, particles) they felt so certain they "saw."

Pick a favorite? Now, THAT's a challenge. I could spend a lot of time at the link below.

As to "Mock on, Mock on Voltaire Rousseau," I think of Wendell Berry's "Life is a Miracle." Mock on, Mock on Wilson Dawkins!

http://www.blakearchive.org/