{"id":362,"date":"2010-04-26T22:04:34","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T21:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=362"},"modified":"2010-04-26T22:04:34","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T21:04:34","slug":"does-gordon-brown-read-this-blog-or-would-blake-vote-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=362","title":{"rendered":"Does Gordon Brown read this blog – or: would Blake vote Labour?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suspect the Prime Minister has been reading this blog. Today he addressed the Royal College of Nursing<\/a> Conference in Bournemouth. It seems that like William Blake he’s been seeing angels, for he said: ‘We feel like parents who have been in the presence of angels dressed in nurses\u2019 uniforms, performing the most amazing works of mercy and care. And I will never forget seeing in real time every minute of the day that idea of service and selflessness summed up by the great poet William Blake:<\/p>\n

Can I not see another’s woe?
\nAnd not be in sorrow too?
\nCan I see another’s grief?
\nAnd not seek for kind relief?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

‘That is the spirit of nursing,’ he said, to (of course) rousing applause. Only last week this same William Blake was quoted on this very blog<\/a>. He, being dead, cannot be canvassed (not that that stops politicians, of course). I haven’t checked but I doubt Blake ever had a vote (he died before the 1832 Reform Act, though would probably have been too poor to qualify even then). If he had, would he have supported New Labour? As I noted this morning<\/a>, the Green Party has already laid claim to Blake’s own words in ‘Jerusalem’ about a ‘green and pleasant land’. Blake was a free spirit, unwilling to bound by the chains of a mainstream party – I suspect he would have sympathised with the Greens but probably fallen out with them after a while. <\/p>\n

Next question: who would the following poets have voted for? Give chapter and verse – or at least verse, in support of your answers:<\/p>\n