Night Thoughts (poem)

"Night Thoughts" is the most commonly used title of a poem by Edward Young published in nine parts between 1742 and 1745. The full title of the poem is "The Complaint: or Night-Thoughts on Life, Death & Immortality".

The poem is written in blank verse. It describes the poet's musings on death over a series of nine "nights" in which he ponders the loss of his wife and friends, and laments human frailties. The best-known line in the poem is the adage "procrastination is the thief of time", which is part of a passage in which the poet discusses how quickly life and opportunities can slip away.

"Night Thoughts" had a very high reputation for many years after its publication, but is now best known for the fact that it gave rise to a major series of illustrations by William Blake.

Blake's Illustrations of 1795-7

William Blake was commissioned in 1795 to illustrate "Night Thoughts" for a major new edition of the poem to be published by Richard Edwards. Blake began by making a series of 537 watercolour illustrations from which he planned to engrave about 200 for publication. The first volume - with forty-three engravings by Blake - was published in 1797, but it was a commercial failure and the expensive publishing venture was abandoned.

Because the principal evidence of Blake's work on these illustrations was the comparatively short series of engravings, art history has been slow to recognise the significance of the project within Blake's oeuvre. In 1980, the Oxford University Press began publication of a projected five-volume scholarly edition of Blake's "Night Thoughts", edited by J. E. Grant et al.; two volumes have so far appeared and the fifth apparently been abandoned. [http://sites.unc.edu/viscomi/night_fineprint.htm] . In 2005 The Folio Society published in two volumes a fine edition facsimile accompanied by a commentary by Robyn Hamlyn.

Poem Text: [http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2414.html]