Alan Jacobs


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Blake’s savagely funny annotations to Robert Thornton’s The Lord’s Prayer, Newly Translated (1827). He does his own translation, of Thornton’s interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer into plain English:

Our Father Augustus Caesar who art in these thy Substantial Astronomical Telescopic Heavens, Holiness to thy Name or Title & reverence to thy Shadow. Thy Kingship come upon Earth first & thence in Heaven. Give us day by day our Real Taxed Substantial Money bought Bread & deliver from the Holy Ghost (so we call Nature) whatever cannot be Taxed, for all is debts & Taxes between Caesar & us & one another. Lead us not to read the Bible but let our Bible be Virgil & Shakspeare & deliver us from Poverty in Jesus that Evil one. For thine is the Kingship (or Allegoric Godship) & the Power or War & the Glory or Law Ages after Ages in thy Descendents, for God is only an Allegory of Kings & nothing Else. Amen.
(Some guesswork involved in the text and punctuation there; every Blake editor struggles with this.)