I feel I need to write something here about my own motivations in setting these fine words. Briefly: Blake is, to me, an inspired humanist and also a visionary and free-thinker. I know his 'free love with bondage bound' (grotesque in today's terminology) is usually mis-interpreted: For me, he merely meant 'the freedom to love' untramelled by hypocracy and religious bigotry. In my settings, I chose to try and grasp the span of Blake's thinking from the exposition of the Child, in the first poems, as a spirit-creature passing from Innocence and acceptance of all humans as equally important in creation (in the 'Divine Image' - the last poem in the first group of settings) to the experience of the 'thorns' of experience, where the realities of Life, beset by the dogmas and strictures of the Establishment and Religion often infect this 'true self' (the 'Sick Rose'). In the final four songs of the settings Blake uses symbols of flowers - the 'rose' (as the wholesome, physical, developing, healthy SELF) - the 'Lily' (the purity of inner spiritual beauty) - and the 'Sunflower' (a symbol of hope and confident ambition, symbolizing mankind's progress and assured future). This, at any rate, is how I interpreted Blake's meaning, and that is why I chose this sequence of poems over the two sets of songs to form a complete arc from start to finish. Their meaning is, for me, as important to today's society as it may have been in Blake's day.

Neville Bower

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