The Human Abstract — Jul 29, 2026

Blake takes two virtues we usually praise, pity and mercy, and shows their uncomfortable root: they can only exist because someone else is suffering. From that unsettling seed he grows an entire dark tree, tracing how fear, selfishness, and false humility twist into cruelty, and how cruelty disguises itself with tears and holiness until it flowers into deceit. The imagery does the real work here, the tree with its shade, its caterpillar and fly feeding on mystery, the raven nesting in its thickest branches. It reads like a twisted version of Eden, except the forbidden tree isn't out in some garden, it's inside us. The poem moves in tight, almost nursery-rhyme couplets, which makes the horror land harder, that sing-song bounce carrying such bleak logic. It still lands today because Blake is really asking whether our virtues are sometimes just comfortable disguises for power, a question that hasn't gone stale.