And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.
One hundred years ago, a retired British general, Sir Francis Younghusband, came to the view that German propaganda was damaging the British war effort. To counteract it, he founded campaign called “Fight for Right”. Believing that it needed a song, he asked the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges, for words. Bridges selected verses by the 18th century English mystical poet, William Blake. He took this poem to his friend, Hubert Parry, professor of music at Oxford, and a man considered to be one of England’s finest contemporary composers. He asked for “suitable, simple music, that an audience could take up and join in.”
Parry wrote suitable but certainly not simple music, but for all that, ever since its first performance in March 1916, it has been taken up and sung full voice in churches and schools, by trade unionists, suffragettes, missionaries, rugby supporters, promenaders; in short, by people of all walks of life, nationalities and political persuasions.
Asking Parry to compose the musical setting was an inspired choice. As a musician, he believed that German music stood at the very pinnacle of the art form. He was internationalist in outlook, and watched the destruction of the young men of Europe in the trenches of Flanders and France with horror and despair. He was no nationalist; he was no jingoist and, shortly after writing Jerusalem for the “Fight for Right” campaign, he withdrew its right to use his work, instead assigning the rights to the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. It was a mark of his and his wife Maude’s lifelong commitment to the cause of votes for women.
Parry, in some ways such an establishment figure, had real anti-establishment leanings – deploring militarism and war, actively supporting an end to male privilege and looking forward to a time when all would be equal. His beliefs made him a composer well-suited to set Blake’s words.
The son of a shopkeeper, Blake was an engraver to trade. Never well off, he was part of and identified with that stratum of English society which lived with poverty and debt, hunger and disease, and which was then entirely unrepresented in the places of power. His parents were Dissenters, that is not members of the Church of England, a principled stance which put them at considerable social disadvantage. William Blake was profoundly influenced by the Bible and Old Testament prophecy in particular, and biblical imagery suffuses his poetry. He was also a mystic; he believed he had prophetic powers himself, and was deeply influenced by ancient English legends of the Druids.
The text of And did those feet which appears above is faithfully transcribed from Blake’s own handwritten manuscript, which accounts for its non-standard punctuation and capitalisation. That’s important, because, although it sounds like it begins with four questions, the lack of question marks after the first two couplets leaves open the possibility that these are assertions of ideas Blake believed to be true.
The poem begins with a reference to the legend that, in the years the Gospels say nothing about the life of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea brought him on a trading visit to England. It may be that Blake believed that this had happened; after all he believed some strange things, but it is more likely that he is working towards a mystical rather than a literal truth. Jesus’ feet may never have actually walked England’s pleasant pastures, but God’s Spirit is everywhere present. Jerusalem, in this context, is not the physical Palestinian city but a metaphor for the kingdom of God, present on earth.
Elsewhere, Blake speaks of loss of innocence. Here, he conjures a picture of the Spirit of God present but overlooked, of the Kingdom of God crowded out and obscured by sin, using that highly redolent phrase – “these dark Satanic mills”. So much meaning is packed into these four words: the enslavement of working people in the factories of the Industrial Revolution; the dehumanising of children and women and men as their humanity is sacrificed on the altars of power and profit and war; even the universities and the churches, which Blake accused of imposing false ways of thinking on people.
These are ills which demand response. Drawing heavily on imagery from Ephesians 6, our first reading this morning, and a little bit on the story of the death of Elijah, Blake calls for the weapons of spiritual warfare, as do we when we sing his words. The bow of burning gold symbolises purity of intent; the arrows desire truth and justice, peace and equity. The prayer is for the clouds of sin covering the land to be folded back, broken up. The chariot of fire is the transport to the kingdom of heaven.
Then comes the climax – a vow, a promise –
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.
This fight is to be fought by intellect, speech, persuasion, and goodwill, not by physical destruction. Blake abhorred war. Those who take up the struggle must not rest from it until God’s kingdom is fully revealed, unchallenged, on earth. In England? Well, Blake was English. It was what he knew. This is not a cry for English exceptionalism, proclaiming England to be better or more worthy than any other place. Although the name may sit somewhat uncomfortably on non-English tongues, all that we know of Blake leads us to conclude that his vision was not confined to one place or country, but embraced all humanity.
These are some of the reasons why this is a hymn for our time, and a hymn for this day in particular. The drumbeats of war are being heard again by those who have ears to hear them. The fires of division are being stoked. This is Remembrance Sunday, but remembrance will have failed if it thinks just about glory and heroism and sacrifice and does not remember the evils which lead to war – the turning of race against race, the rhetoric of blood and soil nationalism, the overblown claims of greatness and superiority, the exploitation of the poor, the cynical manipulation of legitimate grievance, the lust for rearmament, the erecting of barriers, the will to tear up hard won international agreements. All these things we are seeing and hearing getting louder, more insistent, more confident. We see their appalling consequences in Syria and Mosul. We hear them in the words of the far right government of Hungary, in the speeches of ultra-right-wing politicians in Germany, in France, in the Netherlands. We heard some of them in the voices of some who campaigned for Brexit and we have heard them from the man elected to the presidency of the United States. Certainly, the drumbeats of war are sounding.
And make no mistake, they are sounding because things are profoundly wrong. The neoliberal project of the Thatcher and Reagan, of Blair and Clinton and Bush and Brown and Cameron and, yes, even Obama, may be dying, and rightly so, but it is not going to give up without a fight. It is dying because it has done too little to distribute wealth fairly, and too much to concentrate it in too few hands. People are right to be angry, but the anger of white men should not be directed against black men, nor against women, or Muslims, but against those who have gamed the system and made themselves immensely wealthy. Now is a time for unity. Now is a time for solidarity. Now is a time for dialogue, for understanding, for mental, not physical, fight. Now is a time to proclaim the values of the kingdom of God, to break through the clouds of sin, to unshackle the bound, to seek the Spirit of God and find the face of Christ in all people. In unity not division, in faithfulness not fear, will we honour the memory of men and women who died in battle. In these dangerous times, if these poppies that we wear are to mean anything, they must be for us signs that we will not cease from mental fight, nor let our swords sleep in our hands, till, with God, we have built his kingdom of peace and justice in this, and every other, land.
Amen.
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