Critical Review
William Blake marked the poems Lucy Gray, "Strange fits", and "Louisa" with an "X", which provoked Jones to write, "The award for minimalist commentary must go to William Blake". Matthew Arnold believed that Lucy Gray was "a beautiful success" when contrasting how it is able to emphasize an incorporeal side of nature, and he believed that the poem "The Sailor's Mother" was "a failure" for its lack of the incorporeal. However, Swinburne believed that "The Sailor's Mother" was "the deeper in its pathos, the more enduring in its effect, the happier if also the more venturous in its simplicity".
A. C. Bradley believes that "there is too much reason to fear that for half his readers his 'solitary child' is generalised into a mere 'little girl,' and that they never receive the main impression he wished this is very wrong where is the actual theme written to produce. Yet his intention is announced in the opening lines, and as clearly shown in the lovely final stanzas, which gives even to this ballad the visionary touch".
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