What's the sound of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, you ask? Well, to quote the poets RUN-DMC, "It's tricky."
As we talk about over in "Form and Meter," Blake is not interested in any kind of conventional… .well, anything really. He's not into conventional religion, he's not feeling the conventional notions of good and evil, and he sure as Shmoop isn't interested in writing a typical poem that conforms to expectations of rhythm and rhyme.
That's not to say, though, that we can't still see traces of Blake's poetic sensibilities floating around in this book. As the saying goes, "You can take the poet out of the poetry, but you can't take the poetry out of the poet." Okay, so we just made that saying up, but we think it holds true in this case. Just check out the poem that begins the book:
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
Once meek, and in a perilous path[…]
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees. (1.2-1.8)
If you reads those lines out loud, you'll hear a lot of long E sounds (as in "deep," "meek," "heath," and "bees"). That, Shmoopers, is what's called in the poetry biz assonance. All those long Es are bunched up into these few lines and create a kind of background crying effect, a subtle "eeeeeee!" that echoes through the lines and add a sense of urgency to Blake's description.
Blake's also one for some alliteration in this introductory poem. We read about how the "perilous path was planted" (1.9) and how the "bleached bones/ […] brought forth" (1.12-1.13). We also read about the "sneaking serpent" (1.17). All these repeated beginning sounds create a punch in your mind's ear (if you can imagine that), underscoring the lines with a kind of sonic exclamation point.
Despite all the straightforward prose that's going on in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, then, Blake remains a poet at heart. He just can't resist including a few lines of verse, and then manipulating the sound in those lines to add powerful highlights. Even while he was doing his own thing, Blake was a guy who stayed true to his roots. Respect.