William Blake (1757-1827)
William Hayley’s Ballad – The Horse
1805
Engraving
4 1/4 x 2 3/4″ (10.80 x 5.72 cm)
Wetmore Print Collection, Connecticut College
FW-0054

While William Blake is well known for his dramatic mythological and Biblical watercolour paintings and his epic poems, William Hayley’s Ballads – The Horse is an illustrative engraving done in collaboration with William Hayley, a poet much like Blake himself. The engraving showcases Blake’s fine use of detail and line coupled with tight composition, causing tension between the characters in his work. The Horse illustrates the atmosphere of tension and peace in the last poem in Hayley’s anthology of Ballads, under the same title, which tells the story of a runaway Arabian stallion, confronted with a mother’s courage as she stands between the beast and her daughter. As the stallion reaches the woman, it is suddenly tamed.