The Little Girl Found, from "The Songs of Innocence and of Experience"

Inscriptions

Inscribed, in plate, center: Famished, weeping, weak / With hollow piteous shriek / Rising from unrest, / The trembling woman prest. / With feet of weary woe; / She could no further go. / In his arms he bore, Her arm'd with sorrow sore: / Till before their way. A couching lion lay. / Turning back was vain, / Soon his heavy mane, / Bore them to the ground, / Then he stalk'd around. / Smelling to his prey, / But their fears allay, / When he licks their hands: / And silent by them stands. / They look upon his eyes / Fill'd with deep surprise: / And wondering behold, / A spirit arm'd in gold. / On his head a crown / On his shoulders down, / Flow'd his golden hair, / Gone was their care. / Follow me he said, / Weep not for the maid: / In my palace deep / Lyca lies asleep. / Then they followed, / Where the vision led: / And saw their sleeping child, / Among tygers wild. / To this day they dwell / in a lonely dell, / Nor fear the wolvish howl / Nor the lions growl.; inscribed, in graphite, lower center: [from old mount] Page from Blake's Songs of Experience printed about 1831 Chas. Eliot Norton Coll. / fragment of the poem The Little Girl Found.

Provenance

Dr. Franz H. Hirschland (1880-1973), New York, New York; given to present collection, 1948.

Catalogue Raisonne

Bindman 1978.255; Binyon 1926.215

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