The Grey Monk

William Blake's writings come across as highly suspicious of formal religion, but in this poem he clearly shows his belief in Christ and the spiritual world. Indeed its message is similar to when Christ taught Peter about a 'stone' he should build his church upon. This 'stony bed' was the revelation that he was the Christ and only upon this revelation would it withstand the ‘gates of hell.’ (Bible, Matt. 16).

When Jesus was betrayed by Judas and the Pharisees came to arrest him with their weapons, Peter drew his sword to cut off the ear of a nearby servant. After healing the wounded servant, Jesus rebuked Peter, “Put up thy sword into thy sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (Bible, John 18). This should’ve reminded Peter of the stern rebuke he received when Peter was taught of the 'stony bed.' On that occasion, Peter bravely insisted the suffering and death of Jesus 'shall not be unto him.' Jesus upbraided Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan. thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” (Bible, Matt. 16).

"The Grey Monk" compares two different ways people flee when they are afraid: some flee to the ‘stony bed’ (taking up the cross of Jesus), while others flee to the worldly security of the ‘purple tyrant’s bed’ (the hand of vengeance). The monk says that after fleeing to the ‘stony bed,’ God told him that the words he commanded the monk to write would prove the ‘bane of all that on earth he loved.’ At 12 midnight, the monk was being called of God to essentially deny himself vengeance and take up his cross, and follow the ‘Word’ that would prove to be the 'bitter pill' he must swallow in order to cure the reoccurring 'sweet fruits' of war.

In the second to the last verse of Blake’s poem, he shows the progression of the monk 'taking up his cross' through three important stages. The first stage is for him to shed a 'widow's tear' which Blake compares to an intellectual thing. In the bible, the church is compared to a widow who lost her husband after Christ's crucifixion. Human suffering that evokes tears is unique only to the intelligent human being, and so the first stage of the monk’s journey then is to recognise consciously his helpless state before God. The second stage of 'taking up one's cross' is a deep sigh which Blake says is ‘the sword of an angel king.’ Angels penetrate the monk’s soul with the sword of truth and justice which convicts his mind as it did Peter when he denied his association with Jesus three times. When Peter remembered Jesus foretelling that he would deny him three times, it was as if his heart had been stabbed by a sword, and he bitterly wept (Mark 14: 72). Hearing an 'angel's word' can come as loud as a blaring trumpet until the walls of deception come crashing down. The last stage of 'taking up one's cross' is the ‘bitter moan of a martyr’s woe’ which Blake says is the 'arrow from the Almighty’s bow.’ This is the stage where the monk is fully transformed and converted. It’s the stage where the ‘tyranny of fear’ or the ‘serpent’ is finally crushed for this was the curse God placed upon the serpent after he had deceived Eve in the beginning. While the serpent’s seed would ‘bruise her heel,’ her seed would ‘crush his head’. (Genesis 3:15).

Blake, however, observed after the French Revolution that while the ‘merciless tyrant’s’ head was guillotined by the ‘iron hand,', this was futile since his replacement brought in a reign of terror far more hideous. The Revolutionaries’ goals of equality, liberty, and the fellowship of brotherhood and sisterhood (thy father, thy brother, thy children) ended in death, persecution and more violent war. They had merely replaced the ‘purple tyrant’ with an unusually cruel and ‘merciless tyrant.’ The error they made, as Blake pointed out in "The Grey Monk" was like Peter, reacted with the ‘hand of vengeance’ instead of humbly fleeing to the ‘stony bed’ with ‘roots like ancient trees.’ It’s only at the 'stony bed' of forgiveness that Blake claims the world can be ‘free from fear.’