1777, and published in 1783, there appears an extraordinary poem
written in blank verse, but divided into quatrains, and entitled
_Fair Elenor_. This juvenile production seems to indicate that
Blake was familiar with Walpole's Gothic story.[32] The heroine,
wandering disconsolately by night in the castle vaults--a place
of refuge first rendered fashionable by Isabella in _The Castle
of Otranto_--faints with horror, thinking that she beholds her
husband's ghost, but soon:

"Fancy returns, and now she thinks of bones
And grinning skulls and corruptible death
Wrapped in his shroud; and now fancies she hears
Deep sighs and sees pale, sickly ghosts gliding."

A reality more horrible than her imaginings awaits her. A
bleeding head is abruptly thrust into her arms by an assassin in
the employ of a villainous and anonymous "duke." Fair Elenor
retires to her bed and gives utterance to an outburst of similes
in praise of her dead lord. Thus encouraged, the bloody head of
her murdered husband describes its lurid past, and warns Elenor
to beware of the duke's dark designs. Elenor wisely avoids the
machinations of the villain, and brings an end to the poem, by
breathing her last. Blake's story is faintly reminiscent of the
popular legend of Anne Boleyn, who, with her bleeding head in her
lap, is said to ride down the avenue of Blickling Park once a
year in a hearse drawn by horsemen and accompanied by attendants,
all headless out of respect to their mistress.

Blake's youthful excursion into the murky gloom of Gothic vaults
resulted in a poem so crude that even "Monk" Lewis, who was no