Lyric Poem · Death & Loss
To Tirzah
Whate'er is born of mortal birth
Must be consumed with the earth,
To rise from generation free:
Then what have I to do with thee?
The sexes sprang from shame and pride,
Blown in the morn, in evening died;
But mercy changed death into sleep;
The sexes rose to work and weep.
Thou, mother of my mortal part,
With cruelty didst mould my heart,
And with false self-deceiving tears
Didst bind my nostrils, eyes, and ears,
Didst close my tongue in senseless clay,
And me to mortal life betray.
The death of Jesus set me free:
Then what have I to do with thee?
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“To Tirzah” by William Blake — quilloak.com/poems/to-tirzah
Quick facts
- Poem
- To Tirzah
- Poet
- William Blake
- Length
- 16 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Death & Loss, Sad, Love
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 16 lines · 3 stanzas of 4–8 lines
- Line length
- Mostly 8-syllable lines (tetrameter length).
- Refrain
- “Then what have I to do with thee?”Repeated lines act as the poem's hinge or drumbeat.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- William Blake1757–1827
- Source record
- PoetryDBTo Tirzah by william-blake, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 d0f007ffde644472…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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