Billy Bragg

Upfield

from the album William Bloke, 1996.

I'm going upfield, way up on the hillside
I'm going higher than I've ever been before
That's where you'll find me, over the horizon
Wading in the river, reaching for that other shore
I dreamed I saw a tree full of angels, up on Primrose Hill
And I flew with them over the Great Wen till I had seen my fill
Of such poverty and misery sure to tear my soul apart
I've got a socialism of the heart, I've got a socialism of the heart...'

In an article in The Observer, 22nd October 2000, the singer/songwriter said, 'My song Upfield was inspired partly by William Blake; I borrowed events from his life for the song's narrator, such as putting him on Primrose Hill seeing angels. It's about moving from an ideological argument for a better society to a more humanitarian vision; a socialism of the heart, the kind of compassion I find in Blake'.

The story of Blake as a child seeing 'a tree full of angels' on Peckham Rye common is well known, but as far as I know his only mystical experience on Primrose Hill was a vision of the 'spiritual Sun' (see the William Blake entry).