“He who binds himself to a joy doth the winged thing destroy. He who kisses the joy as it flies lives forever in eternity’s sunrise.” Leonard Cohen Invokes William Blake On Living In The Moment

Allan Showalter


Dorothy Parker once remarked, ‘Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.’ This also seems to make sense.

 

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I think Blake said something similar. ‘He who binds himself to a joy doth the winged thing destroy. He who kisses the joy as it flies lives forever in Eternity’s sunrise.’ Everybody, in a certain way, approaches things with a dissecting scalpel. It’s a good idea to leave that on the shelf for a while if you can.

 

Leonard Cohen

 

From Hallelujah For Leonard Cohen by Jon Wilde, Sabotage Times. Posted 22 March 2011 (the quote itself is taken from a 1988 interview).

 

DrHGuy Note: The poem Mr Cohen references is “Eternity” by William Blake:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise

And, Mr Cohen was not the only artist to blacken the pages of notebooks. Blake’s handwritten lines below are from his Notebook 43.

I am republishing selected posts from my former Leonard Cohen site, Cohencentric, here on AllanShowalter.com (these posts can be found at Leonard Cohen). This entry was originally posted September 13, 2011 at DrHGuy.com, a predecessor of Cohencentric.

2 thoughts on ““He who binds himself to a joy doth the winged thing destroy. He who kisses the joy as it flies lives forever in eternity’s sunrise.” Leonard Cohen Invokes William Blake On Living In The Moment”

  2. “Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
    Our meddling intellect
    Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
    We murder to dissect.”
    – William Wordsworth

    Reply

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