"Jerusalem"

 I'm thinking about William Blake's poem Jerusalem. Its text was set to music by Hubert Parry, and so the hymn was born that became the anthem of the Women's Institute in 1924 after the suffragettes adopted its use in 1918. Nowadays it's been sung at patriotic events like the Last Night of the Proms, along with Land of Hope and Glory, and Rule Britannia, year by year in England for ever such a long time.

It strikes me as an interesting example of conflict between style and content. Parry's tune is gloriously rousing, and the hymn itself references the English countryside — a vague overall effect is created of celebrating Tolkeinesque shires and proclaiming establishment of Englishness in some unfocused way. Because of this, its use is often denounced as jingoistic and tasteless nationalism. In parenthesis, is nationalism a negative thing? I've never heard Bhutanese nationalism denounced, or Swiss nationalism, or Japanese nationalism. Only English. But, moving on — those who so denounce it are, I think responding to an impression that arises mainly from the tune. Maybe they haven't paid attention to the words, or maybe they have but struggle to understand the conceits of poetry; what I mean is, perhaps they don't get it.

Here's the hymn, in case you don't know it (if you aren't English, you might not).

What its critics miss, is that Blake's Jerusalem is not asserting English dominance/supremacy but criticising contemporary aspects of English society at that time.

Blake was vehemently antagonistic to the Industrial Revolution — the "dark satanic mills" of the poem. He hated the child labour, the social inequality inherent in a society where wealthy mill owners exploited their work force in miserable factory conditions. He loathed the mechanisation, and the constraints of social rigidity (including the religious variety). He believed in Nature as a conduit or expression of divine imagination — 

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage

Puts all Heaven in a rage. (from Auguries of Innocence)

He believed in what one might call cosmic intelligence, or divine inspiration, in being one's natural self. William Blake used to hold nudist tea-parties. He was all about being your real self unadorned in every possible way.

So, in Jerusalem, he's bringing all the power of his spirit, the power of the natural man, to challenge the dullness, the deadness, the grim cramping coercion, that he saw in the Industrial Revolution. He's advocating for the freedom of the human soul, the liberating power and innocence of Christ-consciousness, to redeem what elsewhere is called "the huddled masses" (Emma Lazarus The New Colossus 1883).

The most similar poem I know to William Blake's Jerusalem is D.H Lawrence's Lord's Prayer. I'm not sure if that's in the public domain (most of Lawrence's work is, but not all), so rather than reproduce it, I'll link you to it — here.

Jerusalem is a roar for the freedom of the human spirit, and for the restoration of natural reverence — it's not a jingoistic assertion of political dominance, as those who oppose the singing of it (not those who love it) mistakenly believe.