To Tirzah

According to Northrop Frye, Blake identified the name Tirzah with worldliness, because the name appears in the Bible to refer to both a rebellious town and to one of the Daughters of Zelophehad.

The poem presents a contrast between the attractive pull of the five senses toward the finite world of "generation" and the opposing impulse toward the infinite spiritual realm that lies beyond physical experience.

The seductive attraction to the delight in sense experience is, from the point of view of the spirit which seeks its freedom in the infinitude, experienced as betrayal.

[1] Particularly striking is the line "Didst close my tongue in senseless clay", which seems to imply that the authority of the artist's voice in Blake's view is that it has been freed from the prison of physicality and therefore comes from beyond this world.

Blake's illustration to the poem depicts two women supporting a naked semi-supine male figure who appears to be unconscious or dead.