And did those feet in ancient time
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The phrase "dark Satanic Mills", which entered the English language from the poem "And did those feet in ancient time" (1804), is often interpreted as referring to the early Industrial Revolution and its destruction of nature and human relationships."--Sholem Stein |
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"And did those feet in ancient time" is a short poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton: a Poem (1804). Today it is best known as the hymn "Jerusalem", with music written by C. Hubert H. Parry in 1916.
Romanticism
During the Industrial Revolution an intellectual and artistic hostility towards the new industrialisation developed. This was known as the Romantic movement. Its major exponents in English included the artist and poet William Blake and poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The movement stressed the importance of "nature" in art and language, in contrast to "monstrous" machines and factories; the "Dark satanic mills" of Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient time". Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein reflected concerns that scientific progress might be two-edged.
