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When I was a boy, the fog that covered London was as thick as a blanket. Smog, they called it, and desire made it. People died, and in the end Parliament passed a Clean Air Act. Desire was brought to heel.
William Blake, whose 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell' is echoed in Frost's 'Fire and Ice', believed that desire should not be denied. Notoriously, he wrote: "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires," a line that has occasioned much commentary. It is impossible to believe that Blake believed this literally - you only have to read his poems of Innocence, in which maltreatment of children is one of the touchstones by which he measured how far the Age fell short of humanity. It may be that the infant is the self, and that the poet warns his reader against stifling his inner needs in obedience to the priest.
Which is why he wrote this :
The Little Vagabond
Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold;
But the Alehouse is healthy, and pleasant, and warm.
Besides, I can tell where I am used well;
Such usage in heaven will never do well.
But, if at the Church they would give us some ale,
And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,
We'd sing and we'd pray all the livelong day,
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray.
Then the Parson might preach, and drink, and sing,
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring;
And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at church,
Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch.
And God, like a father, rejoicing to see
His children as pleasant and happy as He,
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the barrel,
But kiss him, and give him both drink and apparel.
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