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In his own words

The Divine Image

William Blake · 1757-1827 · From Songs of Innocence (1789)

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, All pray in their distress,And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is God our Father dear;And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is man, his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart Pity, a human face;And Love, the human form divine; And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress,Prays to the human form divine: Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk, or Jew.Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, There God is dwelling too.

A hymn to Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, and to where they actually live. Blake finds the divine nowhere but in the human form.

The poems are in the public domain. The texts here follow Poems of William Blake, Project Gutenberg ebook 574, reproduced verbatim, punctuation included. That late 19th century text keeps the famous Tyger spelling while smoothing some others, so a few lines read slightly differently than in Blake's original etched plates. Songs of Innocence first appeared in 1789, Songs of Experience in 1794, combined by Blake into one book whose title page promises to show the two contrary states of the human soul. The introductions and groupings are ours.