Blake William

WILLIAM BLAKE
(1757-1827)

LIFE AND WORKS

William Blake was a painter and a poet of genius, and visionary in childhood. The third of seven children of a successful London hosier, William Blake was born in London on 28 November 1757. William's father was a Dissenter attracted by the doctrines of Emmanuel Swedenborg, nevertheless his son was baptized.
William Blake never went to ordinary school, and he was educated at home chiefly by his mother. At the age of ten he declared his intention of becoming an artist and was allowed to leave ordinary school to join a drawing school. But he did not neglect all general education and reading. His intellect developed early, and he became a voracious reader; he read widely in the greatest English writer, Shakespeare, Milton, Ben Jonson, and the Bible. He also acquired a knowledge of French, Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. By the age of twelve he was writing poetry. All this learning, randomly acquired and independently held, was to influence the poet's later works.
There are three periods in Blake's life. The first, which extends from his birth to his marriage and the publication of his first volume of poems (1782-1783), is a period of apprenticeship in poetry and the arts of design; the second period (1783-1803) is the time of Blake's fully coherent powers as a poet and of his earliest mature designs; the third period (1803-1827) is characterized by increasing extravagance in poetry followed by twenty years of almost unbroken silence, and of full power as an artist, increasing till the year of his death.
In 1772, at the age of 14, Blake was apprenticed to James Basire, a master-engraver specializing in antiquarian and topographical work (1772-1779). In Basire's workshop Blake worked faithfully for seven years, learning all the techniques of engraving, etching, stippling and copying. As part of his apprenticeship, Basire sent William to make drawings of the Gothic statuary in Westminster Abbey and other old churches, and the young apprentice was exposed to the influence of Gothic art. Blake's tenacious affection for Gothic form weathered his growing disillusionment with orthodox Christianity. At this time Blake studied Fuseli's Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks. At the age of 21 Blake finished his apprenticeship and he left Basire, and was admitted to the recent founded Royal Academy at Somerset House as student. He made drawings from the antique in the conventional manner and some life studies, though he soon became dissatisfied with this traditional approach and rejected this form of training, saying that "copying nature" deadened the force of his imagination. For the rest of his life Blake exalted imaginative art above all other forms of artistic creation, scarcely any of his productions being strictly representational. At the Royal Academy Blake befriended such artists as George Cumberland (1752-1828) and John Flaxman (1755-1826). Sir Joshua Reynolds was the principal of the Academy at this time.
In 1782 the poet married the illiterate twenty-year-old Catherine Boucher, daughter of a Battersea market-gardener. Among the neighbours of the Blakes in Leicester Fields were William Hogarth's widow, Jane, and Joshua Reynolds, the painter whose Discourses on Art epitomized the neoclassicism that Blake rejected.
In 1787 one of Blake's Brother, Robert, who had gone to live with him, died of the terrible and then common disease of consumption. Blake never forgot Robert, and continued a visionary dialogue with him until his death; he was convinced that Robert continued to inspire his writings. On several occasions he claimed to have visions. When he was ten he told his father he had seen God at the window and a tree full of angels, and when his brother died William said that he saw his brother's soul "ascend heavenward clapping its hands for joy."
In 1783 Blake published his first volume of poems, "Poetical Sketches. This publication printed at the expense of the artist John Flax man and a bluestocking named Mrs Matthew. His juvenile placed him among the chief initiators of the so-called "romantic revival". This first collection of works reflects Blake's radical humanism.
The French Revolution intensified Blake's radicalism and infused his art with the themes of liberty and enslavement. From the time of the American Revolution to the rise of Napoleon after 1796, Blake was a radical and rebel. He supported the American and the French Revolutions, he praised Washington and Lafayette, and he wrote against George III and the King of France. All this can be read in Blake's earlier prophetic books. The year 1789 was one of Blake's most prolific years as a poet. Most significantly he wrote, illuminated and published Songs of Innocence, the gentlest of his volumes of lyrics, and The Book of Thel, which illustrates his early mysticism and use of emblems.
Blake added Songs of Experience to an edition of Songs of Innocence in 1794; the full title of the collection was Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Under the lucid surface of these lyric poems there is Blake's radicalism and love for freedom; the poet makes the contrast between Songs of Innocence, which were etched in the high hope of the French Revolution in 1789, and the Songs of the Songs Experience, which were etched when England and France were at war in 1794.
Blake went on writing first lyric and then prophetic poems, but they were not to the taste of his time, and when he wanted to print them he and his wife had to do so with their own hands. They were etched by Blake on small copper plates with pictures in the margins and printed and coloured one by one. No one cared for either and was neglected. Blake was a difficult man, odd and sensitive and single-minded at the same time. "He was self-taught, so that his judgements were penetrating and childish by turns; he sometimes spoke as if no one had thought of the things he thought about. His visual imagination made everything that he said more than life-size, and as disturbing as a dream which is unreal because it is too real. He never tried in the least to fit into the world; simply, innocently, and completely, he was a rebel." (J. Bronowski, William Blake, introduced and edited by J. Bronowski, Penguin Bookks, 1978). But obscurity could not suppress Blake's visionary genius. He wrote and frequently illuminated, an assortment of poetic forms, from simple lyrics to a prophetic epic designed to rival Milton's Paradise Lost. Blake's works celebrate the power of the transforming imagination, like Wordsworth and Shelley, but they prevent from clearly associating them with any literary period, shaping a myth that is uniquely Blake's.
In 1793, the period when the poet began to work on his "prophetic books", the Blakes moved south of the Thames to the borough of Lambeth in London where they lived until 1800. These years were among Blake's happiest and most productive as artist, but they also inflamed his social conscience.
In 1800 Blake's new patron was the wealthy William Hayley, a critic, playwright and poet, and the Blakes went to live in Hayley's house at Felpham, a small seaside village in Sussex. At Felpham Blake worked on his engravings, but the Blakes did not stay long there. Blake was arrested on trumped-up charges of sedition. Blake was sympathetic with the French, with whom England was at war. Blake was acquitted, thanks largely to Hayley, his generous benefactor who continued to help Blake through the troublesome years that followed. In 1803 the Blakes moved back to London in 1803. The years that followed the poet's return to London were trying, because he never shook off the poverty which had accompanied him through life. Between 1803 and 1818, Blake either lost or alienated many of his previous patrons.

Blake's Radical Politics

Blake was a natural rebel. The poet's belief in physical freedom was part of his doctrine of enlightened liberty. His dislike of human authority and his radical sympathies found natural expressions in friendships with William Godwin and Thomas Paine, and increasingly in his writings. He published two sets of prose aphorisms under the title There is No Natural Religion and a third called All Religions Are One (1788), and The French Revolution: A Poem in Seven Books (ca. 1791), only one book of which survived.

The Engraver

Blake was an engraver and so he devised a method of relief etching to print his own works. After printing each plate increasingly would be touched up and coloured by hand. Blake's book visually seem medieval manuscripts in providing a rich union of text and illustration. Blake was a total artist who undertook many roles usually separated: he was poet, painter, engraver, printer, publisher and bookseller, even though not very lucky. He also engraved works by other authors.
In 1790 Blake engraved The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93), his principal prose work, a book of paradoxical aphorisms. The plates were made at first by the colour-printing method. In his new home Blake executed some of his most famous engravings, including those for The Book of Job and for Edward Young's Night Thoughts. Blake's poem Milton was finished and engraved between 1804-1808. Blake did not follow the traditional way to publish his works; he became a one-man industry, designing, engraving and producing his own works like the medieval craftsmen. That is the reason why then his engraved books did not reach more than a small circle of readers. His fellow writers considered him an eccentric and a curiosity, neglected and openly derided. In the years that followed he was befriended by a group of artists who called themselves "The Ancients", who considered Blake as their master and mentor, and John Linnel, Blake's new enthusiastic patron, persuaded the Royal Academy to make a grant of twenty-five pounds to Blake. So after 1818 Blake's fortunes changed. In 1825 Linnel commissioned Blake to undertake a series of designs for an illustrated issue of the Italian great poet Dante's Divine Comedy, and The Book of Job.
In spite of his poverty and discouragements, Blake remained tenaciously independent. At his death he left no debts. Blake died on 12 August 1827 in London, and was buried in a common grave at the public cemetery of Bunhill Fields. No one knows the exact location of the grave.

Works: Juvenilia

"Poetical Sketches, Blake's first volume of poems, were published in 1783, and contained such poems as "To the Muses", and "My Silks and Fine Array". This volume of verse, written between the ages of twelve and twenty, is now recognized as one of the major poetical events of the late eighteenth century.

Major works. Among Blake's major poetic works are: "

Songs"
and "

Prophetic books
":

Songs"

Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (1789-94). The poems set the world of pastoral innocence and childhood against the world of adult corruption and repression; they contrast the meek virtue of "The Lamb" with the darker forces of energy in "The Tyger."

The Book of Thel (1789). The work treats the same two "states" and implies the need to pass form primitive innocence through experience in order to achieve a higher, organized innocence. The poet uses here the narrative instead of the lyrical mode and embodies aspects of the developing myth which was fully enacted in his later prophetic books.

Prophetic Books

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). This book opens with an unrhymed lyric, and then proceeds in prose aphorisms long and short, rich in iconoclastic paradox. In the work there are the first fruits of Blake's Gnostic reading, in which he found the dualism of Good and Evil, with Evil as the work of the Just God of the Law and Good as the work of the liberal Creative Spirit.The Marriage of Heaven and Hell fully introduces Blake as a revolutionary mystic assailing the false dualism of accepted religion. When religion has become a punitive code of laws for the obsequiously submissive, then active Evil is better than passive Good. Love joined to Energy is the "marriage of Heaven and Hell."

The Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793). In this work we meet Urizen, the God of restrictive Law.

America, a Prophecy (1793). The book is a short, beautiful and beautifully engraved poem. The combat of America with England is taken as a symbol in the developing life of man, with Urizen as the source of repressive code.
Europe, a Prophecy (1794).
The Book of Urizen (1794).
The Book of Ahania (1795).
The Book of Los (1795).
The Song of Los (1795).
The Four Zoas, originally entitled Vala (1795-1805)
The Torments of Love and Jealousyin the Death and Judgement of Albion the Ancient Man appeared in 1797.

Milton: A Poem in Two Books To Justify the Ways of God to Men , (1804-08). The work uses the allegorical and mythological framework of Blake's earlier poems, and it is his own extremely powerful and personal response to Milton's "Paradise Lost", which had influenced and perplexed the poet's imagination for years. Milton's prose and poetry were Blake's greatest sources of inspiration. Blake appears to suggest that he himself becomes imbued with the spirit of Milton, who descends to earth in the person of the living poet in order to save Albion through the power of imagination, and correct the spiritual error glorified in "Paradise Lost". In fact, Blake felt that his predecessor's art had been sabotaged by an immoderate reliance on reason as the highest human faculty. So "Milton" is Blake's attempt to purify Milton's vision.

Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804-20). In this work Man, or Albion, is the battle-ground wherein the forces of imagination contend against the forces of natural religion.

The Ghost of Abel (1822).

Some od Blake's works were unknown until his papers were examined after his death.

Blake's mythology in his prophetic books.

In his "prophetic books" Blake introduced the figures of his personal mythology: Urizen, the grim symbol of restrictive morality, and Orc, the arch-rebel. Urizen appears with all his depressing characteristics in America, a Prophecy. The ideas of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", and the personified symbols are developed in the poet's successive works, in which Blake pursued his exposure of the errors of the moral code. Urizen has been expelled from the dwelling place of the immortals and has taken possession of man; his agent, or archangel, is Enitharmon. Los is apparently the champion of light and the lord of time, but is held in bondage. Orc is symbol of anarchy, opposed to Urizen. The whole sequence is an inversion of Milton's Paradise Lost, which Blake denounced for trying to justify the evil committed by God. In these works there is also a strong criticism of Christianity. The Four Zoas
of the title of the work are : Urizen (reason), Urthonah (spirit), Luvah (passion) and Tharmas (body). They are traced in a cloud of symbols. Urizen and Orc oppose each other: the oppressive moral code is condemned; Orc and liberty triumph, and the figure of Jesus as Redeemer is introduced.
Milton himself comes perceptibly into Blake's mythology. Blake believes that Milton was of "God's party" and justified the evil that He did. Blake denounced him for this. At the same time he felt drawn to the poetic beauty of Milton, Blake discovered that Milton repented, and, because he was a poet, "was of the Devil's party without knowing it."

MAIN FEATURES

Blake's Personality

Blake was a self-styled poet-prophet for whom the Bible was "the Great Code of Art." His art was far too adventurous and unconventional; for this reason William Blake was largely ignored until after his death, and remained virtually unknown until 1863, when a biography was published. During his lifetime, he was known primarily as an engraver and painter. Only in the twentieth century his remarkable modernity and his imaginative force, both as a major poet and artist, were fully accepted and recognized. As regards the fact that Blake was neglected and left to die in poverty we should bear in mind that his literary works were concealed rather than published. Wordsworth and Coleridge scarcely knew of his existence, says the literary critic George Sampson. "While Wordsworth was still a schoolboy, Blake had found, and was using with consummate art, a diction almost perfect in its simplicity, aptness and beauty. His passion for freedom was akin to that which moved Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey in their earlier years, though, in its later form, it came nearer to Shelley's revolt against convention."

The Prophet

In the "Introduction" to Songs of Experience Blake sees himself as the Ancient Bard, The Prophet, who heard Jehovah speaking to Adam in the garden. He calls the Fallen Man to regain control of the world, lost when he adopted Reason in place of Imagination. Earth is the symbol of the Fallen Man, and only the Bard, who summons the Earth to awake from materialism and to turn again to the free life of imagination, is able to envisage a healing of the grievous split between innocence and experience.

The Visionary Poet and Artist

Blake regarded himself as a seer; he recorded his visions in his poems and designs. They were not drug-inspired hallucinations or literary fancies. Blake was influenced in his youth by the stream of mystical thought, which flew in England apart from the main current of ideas. In particular he was influenced by the religious writings of the German mystic Jacob Böehme (1575-1624), the Swedish philosopher, scientist and mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), and the English religious writer William Law (1686-1761). Blake was particularly responsive to the assertion of the central importance of a spiritual world, and of the presence of the divine in man. His poetry became implicated with ideas, and both his poetry and visions were also inspired by Gnosticism, Druidism, Neo-Platonism, Rosicrucianism and other esoteric ideas and confused sources, and complications induced by the French Revolution. From Gnosticism Blake learned that the Supreme creative God and the Just and Jealous God of the Mosaic law were different beings: that the God of Vengeance and the Devil were identified as evil spirits. A definite Oriental dualism of good and evil is an essential feature of Gnosticism, from which Blake derived his doctrine of Emanations" or cosmic female forms which are pursued by the corresponding "Spectres" or male forms.

Symbolism

Blake was a prophet and a mystic and wrote in and through symbols. In Songs of Innocence and Experience Blake employed a central group of related symbols to form a dominant symbolic pattern; his are the child, the father, and Christ, representing the states of innocence, experience and a higher innocence. These major symbols provide the context for all the "minor", contributory symbols in the songs.(See Robert F. Gleckner, "Point of View and Context in Blake's Songs," in Blake, A Collection of Critical Essays Edited by Northrop Frye, Prentice Hall, 1966). He saw humanity in terms of a natural collection of virtues and innocence, held tyrannically in chains and destroyed by society, the "Palace", the Church and its own ignorance (see "London"). Innocence symbolized by children, flowers or certain seasons. Oppression and tyranny symbolized by priests, the urban industrial landscape, or authority. Swords, spears, chariots, the sun, and animals such as lions or tigers are used as symbols of a natural heroic and creative and earth-moving energy in life (see "The Tyger").

SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF
EXPERIENCE

The work is a collection of combined poems and etchings. The 27 plates of Songs of Innocence were published in 1789, and it was the first of Blake's Illuminated Books. In 1794 published Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Mind, and since then the two cycles have always appeared together. Most of the poems in Songs of Innocence are about childhood, some of them written with apparent simplicity and appear to issue directly from the mouths of children, as, for example "Little lamb, who made thee?", "The Little Black Boy", "The Chimney Sweeper"; others comment on the state of infancy viewed through the eyes of mothers and nurses: " Echoing Green", "Infant Joy", "A Cradle Song", "Nurse's Song". Other poems, on the other hand, quietly suggest an opposite world of sorrow and violence, such as "The Divine Image, "Night" and "On Another's Sorrow", or introduce the prophetic tone and personal imagery of Blake's later work, such as: "The Little Girl Lost", "The Little Girl Found".
There is no reason for thinking that when he composed The Songs of Innocence he had already envisaged a second set of antithetical poems embodying Experience. The Innocence poems were the products of a mind in a state of innocence and of an imagination unspoiled by stains of worldliness. Public events and private emotions soon converted Innocence into Experience, producing Blake's preoccupation with the problem of Good and Evil. This, with his feelings of indignation and pity for the sufferings of mankind as he saw them in the streets of London, resulted in his composing the second set. Blake's most frequently quoted and interpreted poems include a number of poems bearing the same or similar titles to those in the earlier collection, but the poet now shows how the experiences of adult life corrupt and finally destroy innocence. They manifest with great poetic economy the poet's profoundly original vision of the interdependence of good and evil, of energy and restraint, of desire and frustration. Blake's most frequently quoted Experience poems are "The Tyger" and "The Sick Rose". Other "Songs of Experience" bear identical titles to poems in the first collection, such as: "The Chimney Sweeper" and "Nurse's Song", but they reply in a tone that questions and counterbalance their simplicities. These striking examples of Blake's antithetical procedure. In the first "Nurse's song" the children are encouraged to play on uninhibitedly, while in the second "Nurse's Song" their play is undermined by the soured and disillusioned nurse with thoughts of the transience of life and fraudulence of adult sexual relations. The paradisial anarchy of " Echoing Green " contrasts with the religious prohibitions of "The Garden of Love". Blake's angry attack on institutionalized coercion and enslavement embraces ecclesiastical fraud of deferred gratification, as in "The Little Vagabond", the creation of poverty in the middle of plenty, as in "Holy Thursday", "Infant Sorrow", and the moral and psychological devastations of early English capitalism, as in "London".

INTRODUCTION

This is the preliminary poem opening the scene of the Songs. Blake imagines himself as a shepherd wandering in an Arcadian valley and piping to his sheep. With the vision of the child on a cloud the poet sees himself being directed by the innocent spirit of poetry. He is invited to pipe a song about a lamb. The poet is then told to drop his pipe and sings his songs, and finally to write them in a book. The poet uses a reed as a pen and coloured water.

"Piping down the valleys wild"

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child
And he laughing said to me:

"Pipe a song about a lamb."
So I piped with merry cheer;
"Piper, pipe that song again."
So I piped; he wept to hear.

"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer."
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

"Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may reed."
So he vanished from my sight:
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained (1) the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

Notes:

1. stained: in the same way as a painter stains; yet the sense includes an overtone of "polluted".

ANALYSIS

1. Read the whole poem and say which two words are used as symbols.
2. What are "child" and "lamb" symbol of?
3. What type of audience does the poem points to? (Quote the line)
4. What does line 20 really mean?
5. Blake created a system of which innocence and experience are vital parts, corresponding to the two separate and contrary states of the human soul. Say what the state of innocence corresponds in the child and the piper: (Tick as appropriate)

[] happiness
[] sorrow

COMMENTARY

BLAKE AND THE ARBITRARY NATURE OF LANGUAGE

William Blake both embodies yet moves beyond the Romantic archetype of innovation. More than his contemporaries he attempted to reconstitute, or accurately remythologize, an entire Western tradition poetic, theological and philosophical writing. In terms functional status poetry sought break down stylistic interpretive (interpretative) distinctions between these three discourses. For poem was natural medium within which man would once again unify conditions mystical self awareness, justice external, undimmed truth that had been so cruelly thrown apart by centuries &civilised" belief, behaviour convention. believed referential all discourses, but particularly poetry, were responsible distorting effectively determining's vision himself world, own poetic writing draw attention falsifications juxtaposing familiar codes, referential patterns and stylistic conventions a way can best be described as form linguistic pre-Surrealism - familiar linguistic integers (wholes) and structures were repositioned in an unprecedented and, according to a number commentators, inaccessible manner.
His early, twin collection Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789-1805) are often regarded as his most accessible work, but intrinsic peculiarities of these poems hold the key to his broader visionary enterprise. The majority of these lyrics are comprised of short stanzas, often using trisyllabic feet and moving away from the spoken iambic pattern to a form of musical "sung" metre. As such he draws upon a familiar cultural code - in this case the popular type of poem/hymn published and distributed by dissenting preachers, poets and hymn writers of the eighteenth century for the religious and moral instruction of children. In a similar way to Wordsworth's use of the rural ballad Blake causes a deliberate conflict between formal/cultural expectation and realization. But the situations of the utterance created by the Songs are far more perverse and intangible than those of the Ballads. Blake creates a continuous sense of disorientation for the reader, not as a consequence of a particularly obscure programme of syntactic or metrical innovation but by causing continuous and unremitting tension between lexical and sentence semantics and the situation of the utterance. Consider the "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence:"Piping Down the valleys wild"[...]
Superficially, this lyric creates an impression of syntactic and metrical simplicity. Each quatrain consists of regular seven-syllable lines, largely trochaic (indicating song rather than speech) but ending with an emphatic stress reversal for each rhyme word [...]. Each line achieves a large degree of discreteness by the placing of the main verb at a stress position, but the relation between such localized effects and the broader cohesive pattern is deliberately disruptive. The lexical and sentence semantics of each individual line are transparent and undemanding. The speaker sets the scene, the child issues orders and the speaker responds accordingly, but when we examine the interactive relation between these units of cohesion the effect is disorientating. The line/phrase "On a cloud I saw a child" involves straightforward semantic relations - the speaker "I" sees the "child" on the "cloud". But we are uncertain whether the speaker also shares this locative position (perhaps they are both on the cloud) or whether the speaker views the child from the ground. The confusion becomes even more intriguing when we look back to the opening line, "Piping down the valleys wild". Does this refer to the sound of the pipe in the valleys or to the movement of the piper (perhaps on a cloud)? The child speaks to him so we must either assume that they share the cloud or that the child's voice carries from the sky - an effect consistent with his unreal, fantastic status. The confusing relation between the active verbal movement which creates the narrative and cohesive structure of the poem and its deictic features becomes even more pronounced in the two closing stanzas. The piper/speaker sits down on the ground to "pluck" a "reed" and "stain the water". Has he descended from the cloud and does the intimacy and immediacy of his exchange with the child mean that they are now both on the ground?
Throughout the poem the curious tension between the localized semantic simplicity and the less stable cohesive and narrative pattern creates, for the reader, a continuous sense of uncertainty. The final two lines, "And I wrote my happy songs / Every child may joy to hear" exhibit an enclosed and unambiguous sense of transparency and completeness. But interpreted in relation to the child's order to write "in a book that all may read" and the speaker's description of how he "stained the water clear", these lines become a component of an unresolvable paradox. Writing on water is as impermanent as speech; no-one will later be able to "read" these songs nor are they records of songs that the conditional/"future" child "may joy to hear". Localized semantics depend equally upon the reader's awareness of internal syntactic relations and our broader sense of the situation of the utterance - the latter provided either by an actual context or implied context provided by deictic features. [...] In Blake's poem any sense of an implied context is continuously disrupted by the shifting relation between the spatial and active linguistic indicators, and as a consequence the sum of the localized, transparent parts creates a disorientating, incoherent whole. Blake's apparent wish to juxtapose these two elements of localized order and referential disorder depends largely upon his use of the enclosed lyric pattern of the verse form. The regular pattern of short lines and stanzaic repetition provides a relatively stable axis between the two elements, and we should note that the Augustan programme of deploying the double pattern as a supplement to the ordering features of syntax and contextual reference is clearly and deliberately disrupted. Here metrical order is juxtaposed with syntactic and referential disruption. Clearly this lyric fits into the generic-stylistic category of text in which the "baring of the device", the self-conscious interplay between the referential and the poetic function is their most prominent feature [...], and it sets the tone for the rest of the collection. In each of the songs we remain uncertain of the true situation of the utterance: the more immediate localizing functions of the deictics will allow us to position the speaker as child or adult; the frame of reference might shift from the immediate condition of orphans, chimney sweepers or little black boys to the more abstract philosophical significances of rose trees, tigers or lambs.

(Richard Bradford, A Linguistic History of English Poetry, Routledge, 1993.)

THE LAMB

The Lamb is rightly regarded as one of Blake's most successful poems and one of his clearest. The poet speaks about the lamb and the child, both symbols of innocence and religion. They talk together in a kind of dialogue composed of question and answer; the child supplies both question and answer. The child and the lamb are both illustrated by the poet together in the design on the copper-plate, with a cottage to one side and the oak of security in the background. On either side there are delicate young trees arching over the scenes without any suggestions or connotations of Experience.

BEFORE YOU READ.

1. What is the natural habitat you imagine when you think of a lamb? Give a
description according to your own experience.

2. How would you represent the state of "innocence" and of "experience"? What
are your personal symbols of "innocence" and "experience", or, what conventional associations evoke the two abstract concepts?

"Little Lamb who made thee"

Little lamb, who made thee ?(1)
Dost (2) thou (3) know who made thee,
Gave thee life & (4) bid (5) thee feed(6)
By the stream & o'er the mead-(7)
Gave thee clothing of delight,(8) 5
Softest clothing wooly bright,
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee,
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little lamb, I'll tell thee;
He is called by thy (9) name,
For he calls himself a Lamb;(10)
He is meek (11) & he is mild, 15
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.(12)
Little lamb, God bless thee,
Little lamb, God bless thee! 20

(Taken from: William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, O.U.P. 1985.

Notes

1. thee: (archaic) you.
2. Dost: (archaic) do.
3. thou: (archaic) you (scond person singular pronoun, subject).
4. &: and.
5. bid: order, tell.
6. feed: supply with food.
7. mead: field, meadow or grassland.
8. clothing of delight: the lamb's wool.
9. thy: (archaic) your.
10. Lamb: Christ as the Lamb of God.
11. meek: humble, patient.
12. name: Blake refers here to the term "Christian".

ANALYSIS

Style

1. Read the whole poem and identify its main stylistic features; how many
stanzas is the poem composed of?
2. How many lines are there in each stanza?
3. Can you detect any rhyme scheme?
4. The poem opens with an alliterated sound. Identify it.
5. Read the whole poem again and identify the narrator, that is, the voice
asking the questions.
6. What is the connection between lines 1-2, and lines 11-12? What is the technique used by the poet?

Close Reading: First Stanza

7. Who does the poet address?
8. What does the poet ask the lamb in the first ten lines?
9. Write out the denotation of the term "lamb", then its connotations.

connotation
denotation

10. The poet asks the Lamb if he knows who his Creator is and lists the gifts his Creator gave him. Find the verbs which are involved with the Creator's acts of creation.
11. Juxtapose each gift the Creator gave the Lamb with the main connotations
they suggest to you.

1. Gave thee life & 2. bid thee feed / By the stream & o'er the mead- 3. Gave thee clothing of delight/Softest clothing wooly bright, 4. Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice?

12. Are the connotations positive or negative?
13. The Lamb does not need anything more in his life because the Creator has provided him with warm clothes, physical and spiritual joy. Group the words according to their connotations:

Joy of life	Warmth	Pleasantness

14. After analysing the first stanza and the questions the Lamb is asked say whether:

[] the poet is seeking information about the Creator;
[] the poet stresses the Creator's munificence.

Second Stanza

15. In the second stanza the poet gives his own answer to the previous questions. Identify the lines which are the answer.
16. Who does the pronoun "He" (line 13) refer to?
17. How is the Creator called?
18. Line 15 describes the nature of God. Quote from the text.
19. Line 18 opens with the personal pronoun "We". Who does it include?
20. Explain lines 17-18 and say who the poet and the Creator are identified with.

1. The poet:
2. The Creator:

21. In line 18 the identification of God with "child" and "lamb" introduces one of the central paradoxes of Christianity. Substantiate.
22. The first stanza describes the nature of the lamb, the second the nature of a little child, the bodily form God took to be born in our world. What is the main connotation "lamb" and "child" have in common?
23. Consider line 17 again. Why does the poet identify himself with a child and a lamb?
24. Now decide whether the lamb the poet addresses is a real animal or a symbol. Substantiate your choice.

The real lamb
The lamb as a symbol of innocence

25. The poem "The Lamb" belongs to the collection of "Songs of Innocence". What is Blake's vision of innocence according to you?
26. What portrait of the Creator, or God does Blake draw in "The Lamb"? (Tick as appropriate)

[] Liberal and Generous God;
[] God of Vengeance;
[] Tyrannical God;
[] Fierce and severe God;
[] Good, gentle and kind God.

Language

27. Focus your attention on the language used by the poet and say whether the poet uses abstruse or simple words to convey his view of the Creator. Why?
28. What else reinforces the simplicity of the text? (Tick as appropriate)

[] repetitions;
[] the technique of questions and answers;
[] kissed rhymes;
[] alliterations.

THE TIGER

This is the contrary poem to "The Lamb" in "Songs of Innocence". In The Tyger Blake used inspired care in order to reach the effect he wanted to create. He produced three versions, two in manuscript and one on the etched plate, which show the stages through which his mind worked in achieving one of the most profound poems in the English language.
The poem is deliberately composed of a series of questions, none of which is answered. It contains the riddle of the universe, how to reconcile good with evil. Careful dissection will only spoil its impact as poetry.

The illustration shows a tiger, supposedly the "Tyger of Wrath", standing beneath a tree. It is not clear as it seems at first. In some copies of the book the animal is a ferocious carnivore painted in strong colours. In others it appears to smile as if it were a cat. Perhaps Blake did not want to dissolve the mystery of his poem by painting an animal of consistent or obvious character.

BEFORE YOU READ.

1. What is the natural habitat you imagine when you think of a
tiger?
2. Which state do you associate the image of the tiger with, "innocence" or
"experience"?

"Tiger, tiger, burning bright"

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame (1) thy (2) fearful symmetry? (3)

In what distant deeps (4) or skies
Burnt the fire of thine (5) eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire? (6)
What the hand dare seize (7) the fire?

And what shoulder and what art,
Could twist (8) the sinews (9) of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread (10) hand? And what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? (11) What dread grasp (12)
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? (13)

When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

(William Blake, Songs of Experience)

Notes:
1. frame: make, mould, model, form, shape, forge.
2. thy: (archaic) your.
3. symmetry; perfect balance of shape and parts.
4. deeps abysses.
5. thine: (archaic) your.
6. aspire: hope to reach his goal.
7. seize: take hold of.
8. twist: combine by turning or winding together; interweave.
9. sinews: tendons, muscles.
10. dread: feared, dreadful.
11. anvil: a heavy iron block with a flat top, concave sides, and often pointed ends, on which metals are worked in forging.
12. grasp: hold or grip firmly.
13. clasp: hold, grasp closely.

ANALYSIS

Language and Elements of Style

1. Read the whole poem and say how many stanzas is the poem composed of.
2. How many lines are there in each stanza?
3. What is the name of stanza composed of four lines?
4. Are the lines rhymed or unrhymed? Look for patterns of rhyme.
5. Which lines end with imperfect rhymes?
6. Consider the first line and identify its metre. How many stresses, feet and syllables are there?
7. What is the term defining a line of four metrical feet?
8. Are these metrical feet iambic or trochaic?
9. How many syllables are Blake's tetrameters composed of?
10. Now look for alliterations and assonance.

a) Alliteration: /t/ Tiger tiger (l. 1)
b) Assonance: /ai/ Tiger tiger (l. 1)

11. Who is the speaker in the poem?

Close Reading: First Stanza

12. Who is the speaker addressing in the opening line?
13. What is the opening question about?
14. After reading the first stanza of this poem, what similarities can you see between the texts of The Lamb and The Tiger? ( state: 1. addressees, 2. syntax; 3. purpose of the opening questions.)
15. Look up the word "tiger" in your monolingual dictionary and write out its denotation; then discuss possible connotations.

denotation
connotation

16. In the opening stanzas of both "The Lamb" and "The Tiger" the poet describes the natural habitat of the animal he is addressing. Quote the line referring to the habitat of the Tiger.
17. In the opening stanzas of "The Lamb" and "The Tiger" the poet employs the adjective "bright"; what is its connotation associated with?
18. In what sense can we say that the phrase "burning bright" transforms the whole tiger into a symbol? What connotation do you associate with the "burning" quality?
19. Does line 2, "In the forest of the night", really mean the darkness of the night? What other meaning can you associate with the phrase?

Stanzas 2- 3 - 4 -5 -6: The Creator and The Tiger

20. In the second stanzas there are references to classical myths. Quote the lines and substantiate.
21. In the rest of the poem, stanzas 2-5, the narrator of the poem focus his attention on the nature of the Creator and the Tiger. Read the whole poem in detail and list al the words and phrases describing the Tiger, and those referring to the Creator, according to the table given below.

The Tiger	The Creator
- burning bright (l. 1)	- immortal hand or eye (l.3)

22. Consider the "tools" that are mentioned to describe the creation of "The Tiger"; what craftsman's activity do they refer to? Substantiate by writing out the denotation of the craftsman.
23. In the columns above the list of words describing the Creator refer mostly to heavy and hard iron objects and tools of the blacksmith's trade. Why are they associated with God and the Creator?
24. Which stylistic feature seems to echo the repeated heavy blows of the blacksmith's hammer on the block of iron in his workshop?
25. The hammering of the blacksmith is also reinforced by the fast rhythm of the poem. How is this achieved?
26. This portrait of the Creator stresses:

[] the act of creation as a product of spiritual activity;
[] the act of creation as a product of material and concrete activity.

27. As we have seen analysing "The Tiger", the poem is organized as a series of rhetorical questions. Do they receive an answer? Is there any difference with the contrary poem "The Lamb"?
28. What sort of Creator do you feel the Maker of the "Tiger" is? (Quote the lines from the text)
29. Read lines 17-18 and explain their meaning in the light of lines 19-20. Bear in mind that the stars, or fallen angels, never throw down their spears and surrender in Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost." What is the effect of the tiger's creation?
30. Line 20 mentions the Lamb. Why does the poet refer to this animal within "The Tiger" asking "Did he who made the Lamb make thee"?
31. If the Lamb represents "Innocence", what does the Tiger represent?
32. Is there any difference between the first and the sixth stanza? Compare them.
33. Who do the two modal verbs "Could" and "Dare" refer to? What do they describe?
34. Why does the verb "Dare" in the closing line of the poem replace the verb "Could" in the corresponding line of the first stanza?

The Tiger

35. Now focus your attention of the description of the "Tiger". How is the animal presented?
36. Look up the word "symmetry" in a monolingual dictionary and write out its denotation. Then explain its connotation.
37. The word "fearful" means "terrible, awful". Why does Blake match the two words "fearful symmetry"?
38. In what sense is the phrase "fearful symmetry" consistent with the title of Blake's collection of poems: "Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two contrary States of the Human Soul"?
39. The physical appearance of the "tiger" is described both with concrete words:............................. , and abstract phrases and expressions: ............................... . However few concrete details are given describing the real animal; it is not a description such as the one of the dictionary gy giving realistic and objective details. Does Blake want to describe the animal in its realistic details? Substantiate.

40. The creation of the "Tiger" is associated with "the forest of the night" (stanza 1, l. 2), and "fire" (stanza 2, l. 6, 8). What are the two images symbols of in Blake's view?

Conclusion

41. What is Blake's preoccupation in "The Tiger"( See line 20 again).
42. Can the poem be viewed as an allegory reflecting the opposing powers of God and Satan? Substantiate.

LONDON

This poem is about the mental state of man. This state is stressed by the eighth line ,"The mind-forg'd manacles I hear", (l. 8) in the second stanza. Blake is writing of a mental state symbolized by the social injustices seen every day in London. From this point of view it is a political poem. Blake was acutely aware of the injustices, oppression and exploitation involved in the use of child and female labour in the new factories built as a result of the first Industrial Revolution. The term "charter'd" applied to the streets and the Thames signifies the restricting effects of the charters and corporations of the business world upon the individual. Once agaim Blake calls upon the image of the chimney sweeper's (l.9) "weep, weep" (see the song of experience XVI "The Chimney Sweeper") to illustrate social evils condoned by the "blackning" Church,(l. 10) and the soldier's unhappy lot is invoked as an actual stream of blood running down the walls of the State.(ll. 11-12) Finally, the manacled mind, symbol of repression both from without and within ourselves, converts the marriage bed into a sort of hearse,(l.16) meaning that every marriage rides in a hearse, rather than in a celebratory coach.
The poem is one of Blake's most direct protests against the evil effect of industrial civilization upon the life of the individual.

In the illustration Blake provides a child leads an old man on crutches. Symbolically this bearded old man may be the creator, Urizen, himself crippled by the conditions he has created. Another illustration on the same plate shows another vagabond who is warming himself at a fire.

"I wander through each chartered street"

I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infants cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear--

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackning church appalls,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls;

But most through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

(William Blake, Songs of Experience)

Notes:

1. charter'd: bought up. A "charter" was a written grant of rights by the sovereign, by which the city was entitled and free to conduct its own affairs. "Chartered" has a multiple usage; it could mean both "the chartered rights of Englishmen", a much used counterblast to the repressive regime of Pitt, and also refer to the urban topography, including the Thames, as literally "charter'd", owned, possessed, hired out, confined, mapped out, designated for commercial use. There is also a "natural" chartering in the sense that the Thames is bound, or chartered, between its banks.
2. mark: notice, sign, stain.
3. marks of woe: marks of sorrow, of great unhappiness.
4. ban: curse; prohibition; it may also mean the marriage announcement, but also social prohibitions.
5. forg'd: shaped by heating in a fire and hammering on the anvil.
6. manacles: fetters, or iron rings used in chaining a prisoner.
7. appals: greatly dismays, horrifies, shocks deeply, turns or grows pale; fills with fear and disgust, but also drapes in a pall, that is, in a dark covering, a cloth spread over a coffin, a hearse, or tomb.
8. hapless: fated, unlucky.
9. sigh: cry.
10. Harlot's curse: prostitute's curse;
11. Blasts: curses, destroys, ruins. The subject is "the youthful harlot's curse.]
12. new-born infant's tear: Blake attributes the infant's tears to the harlot's curse. The phrase also implies prenatal blindness caused by the parent's venereal disease by earlier infection from the harlot.
13. blights: infects with disease.
14. hearse: a vehicle for conveying the coffin at a funeral.

ANALYSIS

Elements of Style

1. Read the whole poem aloud and identify: 1) number of stanzas, 2) type of stanza, 3) rhyme scheme.
-...........................................................................
-...........................................................................
-...........................................................................

2. Read the first stanza and identify the speaker.

Images of London: stanzas 1-2-3-4

3. The poem opens with the speaker wandering through London's "chartered" streets. The word "chartered" suggests two possible conditions in London. Read note 1, or look up the verb "charter" in a monolingual dictionary, and substantiate your answer.

1. First meaning: .................................................
2. Second meaning:.................................................

4. Which word or phrase first reveals that Blake uses the word "chartered" with the meaning of lack of freedom?
5. The poem reveals Blake's social themes and concerns. By gradual change from an ordinary compassionate perception the poem leads the readers the the most strange and terrifying vision of London. Read the whole poem to see how the poet looks at the faces of those who pass him in the street (first stanza ), his perception of the cries and curses (second and fourth stanzas), and the the other strange events (third and fourth stanzas). List in detail references to any kind of injustice and exploitation, and other elements stressing the sordid condition of the London streets, which reinforce the meaning of "chartered".

1. Child exploitation: ............................................
2. Man's exploitation, both economic and political: ...............
3. Nature's economic exploitation: ................................
4. Indifference: ..................................................
5. Corruption and sordid condition of London streets: .............
6. Lack of freedom: ...............................................
7. Lack or death of love: .........................................

6. The sorrowful conditions of London and its people described above are reinforced by the use of repetitions of single word and phrases. Quote from the text.

Repeated words	Repeated phrases

7. The meaning of the poem is also reinforced by strong patterns of repetition of sounds. Blake mixes literal and metaphorical meanings in a disturbing and powerful way. Find examples of alliterations, consonance, and repeated consonant sounds in the whole poem.

Alliterated sounds: ........................................................
Consonances: ...............................................................
Repeated consonant sounds: .................................................

8. How do you define the sounds you have identified, harsh or soft.
9. Do these sounds convey a pleasant or unpleasant perception to the senses?
11. The unpleasant perception that affects the speaker/experiencer is protracted by another linguistic device. Identify the vowel sounds and say if they are mainly short or long.

Vowel sounds: ....................................................

They are (Tick as appropriate):

[] short
[] long

10. Why does the poet make wide use of alliterated sounds, consonances, repetition of consonant and vowel sounds?
11. Which image, word or phrase best suggest that individual people are unable to rebel against the social injustices they are suffering?
12. We find here an image Blake used in "The Tyger". Substantiate.
13. The expression"mind-forged manacles" is figuratively used to emphasize the terrible oppression the people the poet saw in London were suffering. Analyse the metaphor in terms of tenor, vehicle and common ground, then contextualize and paraphrase it in your own words?
14. What is the difference between "mind-forged manacles" and ordinary forged manacles?
15. Two established powers are described in the third stanza. Substantiate.
16. What does the word "blackening" (l. 10) suggest to you?
17. Two categories of victims of social injustice are described in the third stanza, lines 8-12. Quote from the text.
18. In the fourth stanza society seems to be corrupt at its root. The images the poet creates are very violent. Identify them:

11. Which image, word or phrase best suggest that individual people are victims since their birth?
19. Focus your attention of the image of the "marriage hearse" and comment on it in the light of the whole poem, but particularly of the fourth stanza (ll. 13-16).
20. What overall image of London does Blake's poem create?

Speaker and Language

21. The speaker is also the experiencer who is affected by the events narrated in the poem. What is the verbal function which characterises the state and the perception of the experiencer?
22. In the first stanza the speaker wandering through the streets of London is affected by visual elements. What does he perceive?. Quote from the text.
23. In the second stanza there is a verbal shift: the visual elements are replaced by a different verbal function. Substantiate.
24. What does the poet hear?
25. Now focus you attention on the verbal functions of stanzas 3 and 4 and say which verbal function expresses the perception of the speaker from the formal point of view.
26. Consider again stanzas 3 and 4 and see if there is consistency between the grammatical condition, auditory verbal function of the phrase "I hear", and the perceptual condition.

INFANT JOY

The copper-plate and the poem

Blake's design on the copper-plate shows an infant on it's mother's lap with a winged angel gently looking at him inside the open flower of a plant. This apparent simplicity of this delicate poem and the beauty of the illustration have deceived some critics into taking it at its face value. In fact it is related to another poem ,"The Blossom", regarded as an expression of the consummation of love by the act of generation. "Infant Joy", seemingly so innocent, may be understood to show the consequences of "The Blossom", the poem to which "infant Joy is closely related.
The illustration reveals the true nature of the verses. The unidentifiable plant has on one stem a closed bud, an unimpregnated womb. The open flower above is the impregnated womb with the newly conceived infant lying on its mother's lap. The winged angel standing in front of them reveals that he is the messenger in the scene of "annunciation". The second stanza may be the words of the mother or of the messenger, or both.

"I have no name: "

"I have no name:
I am but (1) two days old."
What shall I call thee?(2)
"I happy am,
Joy is my name."
Sweet joy befall (3) thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old,
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,(4)
I sing the while
Sweet joy befall thee.

(William Blake, Songs of Innocence)

Notes:

1. but: only.
2. thee: (archaic) you.
3. befall: to happen to; sweet joy befall: may your life be happy.
4. Thou dost smile: (archaic form) = You smile

ANALYSIS

Style

1. Read the whole poem and say how many stanzas it is made up of?
2. Consider the way in which the two stanzas are written on the page; can you notice any difference?
3. What do inverted commas suggest?
4. Who is the speaker in the first stanza?
5. What does he say?
6. How old is he/she?
7. What is the name of the infant?
8. Is "Joy" a boy or a girl?
9. Who is Joy announcing his/her birth?
10. What reveals the presence of an onlooker in stanza 1?
11. Who do you think the other person may be?
12. Read the second stanza? Is the child speaking here?
13. The two speakers in the poem seem to be mother and child. Read the illustration of the copper-plate given above, which depicts a newly-born infant on his mother's lap, inside a flower, while in front of them an angel stands. What is this a typical illustration of?
14. Look for the word "joy" and say how many time it is repeated?
15. Why so many times? What kind of joy do you think is being referred to?
16. Which words in the poem allude to the state of innocence, which is the name of the collection "Infant Joy" belongs to?
17. Is the question in line 3 "What shall I call thee" a problematic one? Why?
18. Between the two stanzas contrast in styles can be found. Find examples.
19. Why does the poet use the inversion in line 4?
20. Is there any rhyme scheme?
21. Why are the words simple and the sentences short and essential?
22. In the poem there are some archaisms; list them and write the correspondent modern English words.

Archaisms	Modern English Words
thee (l.3)	- you

23. Paraphrase the whole poem in two short paragraphs.

First paragraph: ...........................................................
Second paragraph: ...........................................................

VISIONS OF ETERNITY

IMAGINATION VERSUS REASON

William Blake explained his idea and conception of art in one of his letters to the Reved. Dr. Trusler written on August 23, 1799, which was prompted by Dr. Trusler's observations. Dr. Trusler's ideas differed from Blake's ones on Moral painting and observed that the poet's Visions of Eternity and Ideas needed somebody to elucidate them. "But you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men," replied Blake, and continued expounding his theory of imagination. The creativity of imagination is God-like, in that its work parallels that of God in creation. For Blake imagination is nothing less than God as He operates in the human soul.

[...] I feel very sorry that your Ideas & Mine on Moral Painting differ so much as to have made you angry with my method of study. If I am wrong, I am wrong in good company. I had hoped your plan comprehended All Species of this Art &, Especially that you would not regret the Species which gives Existence to Every other, namely, Visions of Eternity. You say that I want somebody to Elucidate my Ideas. But you ought to know that What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients consider'd (1) what is not too explicit as the fittest for Instruction, because it rouzes (2) the faculties to act. I name Moses, Solomon, Esop, Homer, Plato.
[...] I have therefore proved your Reasonings Ill proportion'd, (3) which you can never prove my figures to be; they are those of Michael Angelo, Rafael & the Antique, & of the best living Models. I percieve (4) that your Eye is perverted (5) by Caricature Prints, which ought not to abound so much as they do. Fun I love, but too much Fun is of all things the most loathsom.(6) Mirth is better than fun, & Happiness is better than Mirth. I feel that a Man may be happy in This World. And I know that This World is a World of Imagination & Vision. I see Every thing I paint in This World, but everybody does not see alike. To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, & a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing which stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule & Deformity, & by these I shall not regulate my proportions; & some scarce see Nature at all. But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees. As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers. You certainly Mistake, when you say that the Visions of Fancy are not to be found in This World. To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination, & I feel Flatter'd when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil & Milton in so high a rank of Art? Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book? Is it because they are addressed to the Imagination, which is Spiritual Sensation, & but mediately to the Understanding or Reason? Such is True Painting, and such was alone valued by the Greeks & the best modern Artists. Consider what Lord Bacon says: "Sense sends over to Imagination before the Decree can be acted." See Advancement of Learning [...].
But I am happy to find a Great Majority of Fellow Mortals who can Elucidate My Visions, & Particularly they have been Elucidated by Children. who have taken a greater delight in contemplating my Pictures than I even hoped. Neither Youth nor Childhood is Folly or Incapacity. Some Children are Fools & so are some Old Men. But There is a vast Majority on the side of Imagination or Spiritual Sensation.[...]

Notes:

1. consider'd: considered.
2. rouzes: rouses, makes active, stirs up.
3. proportion'd: proportioned.
4. percieve: perceive.
5. perverted: led into error.
6. loathsom: loathsome; offensive, repulsive.

THE SICK ROSE

The copper-plate and the poem

The poem The Sick Rose is probably a contrary poem to "The Blossom" in Songs of Innocence and is usually interpreted as an image of the troubles of earthly love. The symbolism of a red rose for corporeal love and of the worm ( or the flesh) for the source of the sickness is clear and simple, and easy to understand. In the illustration painted by Blake a worm is entering the heart of the rose and simultaneously the spirit of joy is forced out. The rose has bent down to the ground. In the same illustration there is a caterpillar feeding on a leaf; this wormlike creature is the symbol of despoiler. The "howling storm"[l.4] in which the worm comes is a symbol of materialism. However the poem can be read at different symbolic levels, open to many interpretation, depending on the symbols they are for us. Some oppositions could be imagination and reason, beauty and decay, creativeness and destructiveness, ideal beauty and natural world menaced by science, reason and industrial world.

BEFORE YOU READ:

1. Think of a flower, the rose, and of an animal, the worm, and say what image they convey to your mind, or what symbols they suggest to you.

"O rose, thou art sick"

O rose, thou (1) art (2) sick:
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy (3) bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

(William Blake, Songs of Experience)

Notes:

1. thou: you.
2. art: are.
3. thy: your.

ANALYSIS

1. Read the poem aloud and identify its rhyme scheme.
2. Who is addressed in the poem?
3. Who is the speaker?
4. The poet addresses the rose in the opening line, and soon after its destroyer. Quote from the text.
5. Look up the two words "rose" and "worm" in your monolingual dictionary and write out their denotations.

Rose: .......................................................................
Worm: .......................................................................

6. List in juxtaposition the lines and the words which describe the rose and the worm in the poem.

Rose	Worm

7. Do The Rose and The Worm suggest anything beyond themselves?
8. Give example of what the rose and worm suggest to you. Then comment on the symbolic associations of meanings and connotations that the Rose and the Worm have in our culture.

Rose: ......................................................................
Worm: ......................................................................

Connotations

a) The rose ................................................................
b) The worm ................................................................

9. If we just consider that the worm is male and the rose female, what is the consistent interpretation of the poem?
10. As symbols the rose and the worm are images so loaded with significance that is not simply literal, and it does not simply stand for something else. They are both themselves and something else that they richly suggest, a kind of manifestation of something too complex or too elusive to be otherwise revealed. Blake's poem is about a blighted rose and at the same time about much more. The short poem "The Sick Rose" can be read at two levels: a superficial level and a deeper level. Substantiate.
11. Consider the poem "The Sick Rose" in the plan of Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience and comment on the meaning of the two symbols, the rose and the worm.

THE FLY

The Illustration

Songs of Innocence and Experience, we know, is an anthology of poetry and painting. In the illustration accompanying this poem, under the text, a mother, or a nursemaid, teaches her child to walk, holding both his hands. Behind her, on the background, a little girl is playing battledore, a volleying game played with a shuttlecock and rackets. On the mother's left is a barren trunk of a tree. The shuttlecock was no doubt intended to suggest the "Fly". The little boy is in the illustration only.
"The Fly" is one of Blake's most popular lyrics, but at the same time an elusive little poem. The three human figures, who dominate the lower part of the design under the written poem, appear to be engaging in innocent activities. The little girl playing the harmless game of shuttlecock is with her back turned toward the reader. The barren tree with a serpentine root is on the reader's right. the lowest bough of this tree follows the curve of the woman's back, so tending to cut off the mother and her child from the girl, who plays a game requiring two players by herself. There is also a barren young tree in the other margin that arches above the whole left side of the design and then falls unnaturally between the two columns of the poem until it crosses a higher branch of the lowest limb of the barren tree on the right. A cloud in the sky covers the top of the picture from the lower limb of the tree on the right to the young tree on the left. It forms a background for the girl from the waist up, including her right arm and right forearm. The ground is divided into two slopes. A distant bird is flying above the complex lower limb of the tree on the right near the ends of the last two lines of text. The dividing serpentine device seems to imply a pictorial criticism of the action and reasoning of the unknown speaker of the poem. The large tree may be interpreted as a symbolic tree of death, or the dead tree of materialism. The chief implications of the design are not optimistic. The union of these two trees seems a parody of the union of trees like that depicted in the design of "The Lamb".

BEFORE YOU READ

1. Look up the word "fly" in your monolingual dictionary and write out its definition.

"Little fly"

Little fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless (1) hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I A fly like thee?(2)
Or art not thou (3)
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink and sing, Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want(4) Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

Notes:

1. thoughtless: i. e. "unreflecting" as well as careless.
2. thee: (archaic) you.
3. art not thou: (archaic) are you not.
4. want: lack.

ANALYSIS

Style

1. Read the whole poem and identify number of its stanzas and the lines in each stanza.
2. Focus your attention on the first two stanzas only and decide who the speaker is.
3. Identify the metre of the poem.
4. What is the effect of trochees as regards the tone of the poem?
5. Identify the rhyme scheme pattern.
6. Analyse the stress pattern od the first stanza.

Close Reading

7. Now paraphrase each stanza explaining the literal meaning when necessary.

Stanza I: ...................................................................
Stanza II: ..................................................................
Stanza III: .................................................................
Stanza IV: ..................................................................
Stanza V: ...................................................................

8. Consider the whole poem again and divide it into tree parts, according to its content, by grouping the stanzas.

First Part: .................................................................
Second Part: ................................................................
Third Part: .................................................................

9. In stanza III the speaker compares himself and the Fly with respect to:

[] their importance
[] their mortality

10. In the fourth stanza the poet states what life and death are. Substantiate.

Life is ....................................................................
Death is ...................................................................

11. How might be further paraphrased the movement of the speaker's mind from the opening line to the closing one of stanza 4?
12. The fifth stanza present the speaker's philosophical conclusion of the poem. Substantiate.
13. What is the central idea in "The Fly?"

[] cruelty
[] human mortality

14. You have probably decided at the beginning of this analysis that the speaker in the poem is the poet himself. In the light of the meaning of the poem decide whether the speaker is:

[] Blake the poet;
[] Blake the Prophet;
[] Blake the man;
[] A man in Experience.

Figures of speech

15. The speaker's hypotheses are expressed in metaphors, similes, and paradoxes. Identify these figures of speech and quote fromthe text.

Metaphors: .................................................................
Similes: ...................................................................
Paradoxes: .................................................................

16. In Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience Blake analyses the two contrary states of human souls by means of contrary poems. Can you find any hint at the two contrary states, "Innocence" and "Experience" within this same poem.

THE LITTLE BLACK BOY

BEFORE YOU READ:

1. Do prejudices against black people still exist? What is your personal view about this problem?
2. Imagine a conversation between two little boys, a black child and a white one; what would they talk about?

"My mother bore me in the southern wild"

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh, my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black as if bereaved (1) of light.

My mother taught me underneath (2) a tree,
And sitting down before the heat of day
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say:

"Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.

"And we are put on earth a little space,(3)
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

"For when our souls have learned the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear his voice,
Saying: "come out from the grove, (4) my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice." "
Thus (5) did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy:
When I from black and he from white cloud free
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.

(William Blake, Songs of Innocence.)

Notes:

1. bereaved: deprived, dispossessed.
2. underneath: under, sheltered by.
3. little space: for a short time.
4. grove: a small wood, or a group of trees.
5. Thus: so, in this way.

ANALYSIS

Style

1. Read the whole poem and say how many stanzas is the poem made up of.
2. How many lines are there in each stanza?
3. Who is the speaker of the poem? Substantiate.
4. Identify the rhyme scheme pattern.

COMMENTARY.

The poem is illuminated by two illustrations. In the first illustration there is "The Little Black Boy" sitting at his mother's knees and talking to her. They are both sitting under a curved tree, "before the heat of the day", (stanza 2) and looking towards the rising sun. In the second illustration the two boys stand before God personified as Christ, the Good Shepherd, with his crook. He sits beside a stream with a willowy tree arching over his head surrounded with a halo, the traditional religious circle of light surrounding the head of Christ, while the water and the vegetation indicate that heaven may be found upon earth (stanza 7).
In the first stanza the "Little Black Boy" seems to regret the blackness of his face and his body, because it hides the purity of his soul, "I am black, but oh, my soul is white" (l. 2); on the contrary the English child is white both inside and outside, "White as an angel is the English child" (l. 3). In stanza 2, which is illuminated by the design above the poem, the "Little Black Boy"'s mother is looking at the rising sun and explains how God gives warmth and comfort to to all living things by the light of the sun (stanza 3, ll. 9-12). Their black bodies are only a temporary cloud, a protection, even, from the extreme heat and light of the Sun God (stanza 4, ll. 13-16). But then the cloud will vanish and they will hear the voice of God calling them, who are His favourite, to Him, :"Come out from the grove, my love and care, / And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice." (stanza 5, ll. 19-20). The "Little Black Boy" receives his mother's kiss and is encouraged by her words; he picks up her mother's message and explains it to the English child: they are really both the same, each being clouded by his body until he reaches a spiritual state of joy "And round the tent of God" they "joy" (stanza 6). In the end the "Little Black boy" feels he is the stronger of the two, therefore he will help and guard the white boy until they love one another as equals: "And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,/And be like him and he will then love me" (stanza 7, ll. 27-28).
In the last stanza (ll. 25-28) the "Little Black Boy"'s innocence is deeply touching, as he imagines himself and the little English boy together. The "Little Black Boy" will "shade" the white boy "from the heat till he can bear/To lean in joy upon our Father's knee." (ll. 25-26).
The spirit of the poem seems to suggest that if only white and black could live together with this kind of open goodwill, the hatred and bitterness of racial prejudice would disappear. "In this way Blake's "Innocence" becomes the most powerful commentary imaginable upon a stale and war-torn adult world. The eyes of the children look out upon a stale and worn-torn adult world. The eyes of the children look out upon a society which is corrupt, vicious, and unjust, and their very trust is itself a denunciation".
Despite the optimistic point of view that Blake gives to the conclusion of the poem the reader perceives the underlying reality of social injustice which at the poet's time was represented by the indecent practice of the slave trade. The last line of the poem, "And be like him, and he will then love me" captures the sadness of the prejudice experienced by the victims of the racial injustice. In fact, the poem was written in the spirit of contemporary anti-slavery writing. To some extent it was inspired by contemporary indignation both against slavery and the supposed inferiority of black races. At the same time the teaching of the poem is that the creation of the world was an act of divine mercy, by which man might become accustomed to endure the heat of divine love.

THE GARDEN OF LOVE

BEFORE YOU READ

1. What images do you associate with the words of the title of this poem, "The Garden of Love"?
2. Compare your findings with the poet's vision.

"I went to the Garden of love"

I went to the Garden of love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this chapel were shut, And Thou shalt not writ over the door;
So I turned to the garden of love,
That so many sweet flowers bore,

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be— And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars (1) my joys and desires.

(William Blake, Songs of Experience.)

Notes:

1. briars: briers: any prickly bush especially of a wild rose.

COMMENTARY

The poem is illuminated with a design above the text. It shows a priest in monk's robes, with shaven head, who kneels with his prayer-book, and young people kneel behind him. The priest is seen instructing a boy and a girl in his doctrines. Below, the grave-mound of "joys and desires" is seen bound with briars.
The Garden of love should be a place where flowers, symbols of love, usually blossom. In the opening stanza Blake's thought now turns to a garden where love would be naturally found, the garden he always associated with happiness, where he had played in a state of innocence. But this garden is now occupied by the Chapel of negation, the command written over its door is forbidding: "Thou shalt not" (l.6). The door is closed to visitors. As Blake wrote in "The Chapel of Gold", "I saw a chapel all of gold / That none did dare to enter in;/And many weeping stood without, /Weeping mourning, worshipping." The chapel built in the garden of love is surrounded by the graves of instincts (l. 9). The chapel is built by the priests,(l. 3) who wish to contain the true joys of life, (l. 4) and to keep the key in their own power.(ll. 5-6) The priest of organized religion is the agent of repression. Blake accuses the Church of emphasizing the negative letter of the law, of interfering in a negative manner with morality. The innocence of true love and happiness has been corrupted by the imposition of negative Experience. As in the poem "London", writes the critic D. Daiches, "Cruelty, hypocrisy, poverty, misuse of the intellect, distrust of the imagination, political and ecclesiastical institutions, frustration of desire, are associated evils which combine to corrupt and destroy." The changed rhythm of the last two lines (ll. 11-12) "provides a note both haunting and sinister, also evidenced in the repetition of "And" (ll. 9-12) and the explosive consonant sounds of the whole last stanza.

NURSE'S SONG (I)

The Illustration and the Poem

The illustration on the plate shows the nurse sitting and watching the children dancing merrily in a ring, under the text and the lower branch of a tree. The weeping willow in the right-hand margin is perhaps a reminder that not all life is fun and game.
This poem is composed of four stanzas. It expresses with perfect simplicity the happy irresponsibility of childhood. It is said that few besides Blake could have written such a successful poem on the delight of being allowed to play a little longer until dusk.

"When the voices of children are heard on the green"

When the voices of children are heard on the green(1)
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast
And everything else is still.

"Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews (2) of night arise
Come home leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies."

"No, no, let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly
And the hills are all covered with sheep."

"Well, well, go and play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed."
The little ones leaped (3) and shouted & laugh'd
And all the hills echoed.

(Taken from: W.Blake, Songs of Innocence.)

Notes:

1. green: a common grassy area where children play.
2. dews: atmospheric vapour condensing in small drops on cool surfaces at night.
3. leaped: jumped.

ANALYSIS

Stylistic features

1. Read the first stanza of the poem and identify the speaking voice.
2. Read on stanzas 2-3-4 and say whether you notice any differences in the layout of the poem on the page.
3. What does the presence of inverted commas reveal?
4. Consider the structure of the whole poem and decide which stanzas and lines are written in dramatic form, and which ones are narrative and descriptive.
5. Is the speaker of stanzas 2-3-4 (lines 5-14) the same as in stanza 1?
6. Are there more than one speakers? Identify them.
7. Determine the form of stanzas 2-3-4, (line 5-14).
8. Who is the speaker in lines 15-16?
9. Determine the rhyme scheme of the poem.
10. Read the whole poem aloud and identify its internal rhymes. Quote from the text.

Line 1: .............................................................
Line 2: .............................................................
Line 3: .............................................................
Line 4: .............................................................
Line 5: .............................................................
Line 6: .............................................................
Line 7: .............................................................
Line 8: .............................................................
Line 9: .............................................................
Line 10: ............................................................
Line 11: ............................................................
Line 12: ............................................................
Line 13: ............................................................
Line 14: ............................................................
Line 15: ............................................................
Line 16: ............................................................

Close Reading: Stanza 1.

11. What is the poet describing in the first stanza?
12. Blake is describing a pastoral setting which brings him peace. Quote phrases and words which point out the poet's reaction.

Spontaneity/content	Peace/order

13. Comment on the effect the scene which is being described in stanza one has on the poet.

Stanza 2

14. What happens in the second stanza?

Stanza 3

15. What's the children's reaction?

Stanza 4

16. What is the reaction of the nurse?

17. As you have seen the state of "Innocence" perceived throughout the poem is described through words involving the senses. The children are happy and convey a feeling of joy. Specify.
18. List the auditory and visual elements in the table below.

Auditory elements	Visual elements

19. The poem is also based on a series of contrasting images. Give examples.
20. Does nature share the children's joy? Substantiate your answer.
21. This is a poem of the "Innocence" collection. What images do you associate with the innocent playing of the children?

NURSE'S SONG

BEFORE YOU READ

1. In the Innocence "Nurse's Song" Blake has presented the joys of childhood, symbol of imagination, creative power, innocence and purity, in a a natural and protected world, which is a vision of innocence. What do you expect Blake to depict in the correspondent Experience "Nurse's Song"?

2. Compare your predictions with Blake's scenes.

The Illustration and the Poem

The illustration shows a doorway framed in grape-clustered vines and an adolescent boy who is allowing his hair to be combed by the nurse; we are to assume his repressed resentment of the woman's power over him and his secret resolution to rebel. A girl, probably his more docile sister sits quietly behind him. The evil of female domination, so destructive of the male personality, already explicit in this poem, was often in Blake's mind, as we know from passages in other writings. The cottage door from which the boy has come is conspicuously wreathed with vines, symbol of the pleasures he will find in life.
This song is a parody of the contrary poem in Songs of Innocence. The difference is emphasized by the form of the title "NURSES Song" ("Songs of Experience") instead of "Nurses Song" ("Songs of Innocence"). In this poem the words are spoken only by the nurse. The children, with their "whisperings in the dale", are no longer real children, but are adolescents aware of sex. The nurse recalls with regret how she wasted her spring-time without real gratification, and tells the "children" that their winter and night will be spoiled by repression and hypocrisy. Her face turns "green and pale" (l. 4) because that is traditionally the colour of the sex-starved spinster, sick with longings for experiences which will never be hers.

"When the voices of children are heard on the green"

When the voices of children are heard on the green
And whisperings are in the dale,(1)
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.

Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise:
Your spring & and your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.(2)

(Taken from: William Blake, Songs of Experience.)

Notes:

1. dale: valley.
2. disguise: the concealment of reality; false appearances and hypocrisy.

JUXTAPOSED ANALYSIS

Stylistic features

1. Read the whole the poem and identify the narrating voice.
2. Compare the two poems, the Innocence and Experience "Nurse's Song" and say whether you notice any differences in the layout of the poem on the page.
3. Is the Experience "Nurse's Song" dramatic in structure?
4. Juxtapose the speakers that appear in both poems.

1. Innocence "Nurse's Song"	Experience "Nurse's Song

5. Determine the structure of the poem.
6. Determine the rhyme scheme pattern of the poem, and say whether it is different from the pattern of the Innocence "Nurse's Song".
7. Read the whole poem aloud and identify internal rhymes. Quote from the text.

Line 1: .............................................................
Line 2: .............................................................
Line 3: .............................................................
Line 4: .............................................................
Line 5: .............................................................
Line 6: .............................................................
Line 7: .............................................................
Line 8: .............................................................

Close Reading: Stanza 1.

8. What is the Nurse recollecting in stanza 1? Paraphrase.

Stanza 2.

9. What is the Nurse's comment in stanza 2? Paraphrase.
10. What do lines 7 and 8 really mean?
11. Which stages of human life do "winter" and "night" represent?
12. Concentrate your attention on the first two lines of the poem and say what the words "voices" (l. 1) and "whisperings" reveal.
13. Focus you attention on the Nurse, the narrating voice. What feelings does she express?
14. Which words reveal the nurse is showing regret about having spent a life without real gratification?
15. This poem of "Experience" is the direct counterpart to the poem of "Innocence" of the same title. Read the first stanza and list the expressions which reveal the changed atmosphere, the passage from the world of Innocence into Experience. Read the first stanza and quote the phrases expressing this change.

Innocence	Experience

16. Compare "Nurse's Song" II with "Nurse's Song" I and say what they have in common in their literal from. Quote from the texts.
17. Compare the internal rhymes you have identified in both poems, and determine in which one they carry negative associations of meaning. Substantiate your answer.
18. The second line of this poem contains a couple of images opposed to the corresponding line in poem I. Juxtapose the words.

1. Innocence "Nurse's Poem"	Experience "Nurse's Poem

19. Blake usually presents symbols of psychological states. Which of the words from line 1 and 2 quoted above stand for the innocent joy of childhood, and which for the sorrowful experience of maturity?

Joy	Sadness
l. 1: ................................ l. 2:.................................	l. 1: ................................ l. 2:.................................

20. The two poems themselves may be considered as symbols of psychological states and ages in man's life. Substantiate.

1. Innocence "Nurse's Poem"	Experience "Nurse's Poem
age:................... symbol:................	age:..................... symbol:.................

21. In the same way find and juxtapose all the other words in both poems which symbolize the two "contrary states of human soul."

Innocence( "Nurse's Poem" 1)	Experience ("Nurse's Poem" 2)

22. In the Innocence "Nurse's Song" nature seems to share the joyous voices and play of the children. Does nature share this vision of innocence in the Experience "Nurse's Song"? Substantiate.
23. What has happened to the vision of innocence depicted in the first "Nurse's Song?" What is Experience associated with?

Figures of Speech

24. The world of Experience is more complex the the world of Innocence. Through which figures of speech does Blake express the symbolism of his view in the Experience "Nurse's Song?"
25. What do the figures of speech you have listed stand for in Blake's symbolism? Juxtapose them with their meaning.

metaphors	meanings

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER (I)

The Illustration and the poem

The illustration is at the bottom of the page, under the text of the poem, and shows an Angel unlocking a coffin and a group of boys rejoicing in their freedom. "The Chimney Sweeper" is related to the earlier poem "The Little Black Boy" and concentrates on serious social problems of Blake's own time. Children are shown in a state of exploitation by society or neglected by adults. The innocent way in which children look out upon their society, and the innocence they display are an effective denunciation of a corrupt and unjust society. The poem is clearly inspired by indignation against the shameful use of small boys, called at Blake's time "climbing boys", for sweeping chimneys. The white boy is blackened by the soot of human cruelty. The usual age at which children became sweeps, or apprentices, was six or seven, but some did so at five or even four. They were brutally and unscrupulously used by their masters, not clothed,fed or washed; they kept them worse than animals.The children were in constant danger of suffocation or burning when sweeping, and the soot which was literally never washed from their bodies caused the cancer of the scrotum. They were encouraged to steal, and were often turned out in the streets by their masters to "cry the streets" on the chance of employment, or for mere begging; their dirt and their reputation for stealing made them social outcasts. Most lines of the poem are literally true.

"When my mother died I was very young"

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me (1) while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry "weep weep," "weep weep"!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,
"Hush Tom, never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet, and that very night,
as Tom was asleeping he had such a sight—
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;(2)

And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags (3) left behind,
They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind.
And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father and never want joy.(4)

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

(William Blake, Songs of Innocence.)

Notes:

1. sold me: a reference to the system of apprentices.
2. coffins of black: either literally black coffins, or, figuratively their mortal bodies clothed in the blackness of soot.
3. their bags: the bags in which they carried the soot they had collected and on which they slept.
4. never want joy: suffer from lack of joy.

THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER (II)

The Illustration and the poem

This is the contrary poem of "The Chimney Sweeper" Songs of Innocence. The illustration portrays the chimney sweeper; it shows the boy with his bag of soot in the snow.
In the corresponding poem in Songs of Innocence the little chimney sweeper appears wholly miserable until he is released by the angel. In Songs of Experience the boy is still sometimes happy (ll. 5-6,9), but he tells his story of exploitation by his parents themselves, who think they are not treating him badly because he is not wholly subdued. They do not take care of him, they are in church (ll. 4, 11) since the Church condoned the society that exploited the children with such cruelty. The Establishment seems indifferent to the children's doom.

"A little black thing among the snow"

A little black thing among the snow
Crying "weep, weep", (1) in notes of woe!
Where are thy (2) father and mother, say?
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.

"Because I was happy upon the heath And smiled among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

"And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury—(3) And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,
Who make up a Heaven of our misery."(4)

(William Blake, Songs of Experience)

Notes:

1. 'weep, 'weep: sweep! It was the cry of the children sent out on the chance of getting work; it is also a pathetic pun; in fact "weep" means shed tears.
2. thy: (archaic) your.
3. injury: physical harm.
4. make up ... misery: they promise that they will be rewarded in Heaven for our pains in this world.

COMMENTARY

Poem 1

The poem is made up of six stanzas of four lines each, with regular rhyme scheme pattern: aabb, ccdd, etc. The speaker is the first person narrator "I", that is, the little child. In the first stanza the poem sketches, through the words of the young speaker, a brief biography of the sweeper. His mother died when he was very young, and his father apprenticed him to a sweep, before he could speak and cry "sweep, sweep"(ll. 1-3). In the second stanza he narrates the story of his friendship with another sweeper in his similar condition, Tom Dacre, whom he helped. Tom cried and was in great distress because he had been shaved completely bald; he comforted him by saying that at least he could never spoil his hair with soot: "Hush Tom, never mind it, for when your head's bare,/You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." (ll. 7-8) The effect of the little chimney sweeper's consolation was that Tom fell asleep and slept well. In his sleep he dreamt that thousands of other little sweeper like him, "Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack" (l. 11) were locked in black coffins. But in stanza 4 an angel came who had a a bright key and set all all of them free from their miserable plight. A vision of happiness followed: "The down a green plain leaping, laughing they run,/ And wash in a river and shine in the sun" (ll. 15-16. In the fifth stanza they all rose naked upon clouds driven by the wind, and the Angel promised Tom would be happy because he would have "God for his father" and would never suffer for lack of joy (l. 20). Tom's soul was filled with the angel's promise and when he awoke the next morning, he went willingly to work, "Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm" (l. 23)

Poem 2

This is a shorter poem, made up of three quatrains. The rhyme scheme is: aabb, caca, dede. The poem is written in dramatic form. The first two lines describe the sad condition of the little sweeper whop is looking for work; the third line is a question asking the child to say where his parents are. The child's answer is in lines 4-12, written between inverted commas. He says that his parents have both gone to church, where they are praying (l. 4). In the second stanza he explains that his parents punished him, "clothed me in the clothes of death" (l. 7), because he was happy "upon the heath" and "smiled among the winter's snow" (l. 6). He was taught the "notes of woe" (l. 8). His parents took advantage of him, but they think they have not done wrong to him, (l. 11) on the contrary they convince themselves they have done the right thing for him, since they are his parents. That's why they have "gone to praise God and his priest and king,/Who make up a Heaven of our misery" (ll. 11-12).

These two poems evoke intense picture of social injustice. In both poems the child is so little he can scarcely cry "sweep" "sweep". It is with terrible irony that the word come out "weep weep," "weep weep"!. The "Chimney Sweeper" 1 is a poem of Innocence, but the reader must ask where is the concept of innocence in a song like this that presents the terrible wrong and brutal exploitation perpetrated against children. The answer is to be found in Blake's vision that innocence can survive, miraculously, the most appallings conditions. In fact the little chimney sweeper does not complain at his condition. He is only interested in the dream in which "by came an angel, who had a bright key,/And he opened the coffins and set them all free" (ll.13-14).
There is no escape for the sweeper in the second poem, in contrast with "The Chimney Sweeper" 1, the poet describes the total helplessness of the child. The world of Experience is choking. The teaching of the day was the concept of duty, of accepting a way of life imposed by God's will, preached in every church. King and parents were the authorities who strictly followed this principle. The criticism of the parents who ought to have been caring for their child, but on the contrary have abandoned him, is introduced. There is also an implicit criticism of the Church, the representative of God, and the King and the Establishment (ll. 11-12), morally responsible for the social injustice. For this pains the children will be rewarded in Heaven.

FURTHER POEMS FOR READING AND
ANALYSIS

HOLY THURSDAY (I)

The Illustration

The text is illustrated by two designs, one above and one below. Both illustrations show children in procession. Blake describes an annual event in St. Paul's Cathedral, which he surely witnessed and. "Holy Thursday" is Ascension day. The event was the marching of some six thousand of the poorest children from the charity schools of London into St. Paul's guided by their beadles for a compulsory exhibition of their piety and gratitude to their patrons. Blake evidently felt the emotional effect of the singing of such a great number of children.

"'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean"

'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two in red and blue and green;(1)
Grey-headed beadles (2) walked before with wands (3) as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames water flow.

Oh, what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own.
The hum (4) of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor:
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

(William Blake, Songs of Innocence.)

Notes:

1. red...green: There were charity schools, i. e. schools for poor and destitute children, whose children wore red, grey, blue and green; one wore orange.
2. beadles: ceremonial officers of a church.
3. wands: staffs symbolizing some officials' authority.
4. hum: humming, continuous sound.

HOLY THURSDAY (II)

The Illustration

There are three designs: one above the text and two on the right margin. The upper illustration shows a clothed woman, under a leafless tree, against a lakeland background, who looks down at the body of a child, probably the lifeless body of her infant. On the right of the text there are two scenes of poverty and death: there are children clinging at her mother, all weeping; in the bottom left corner there is the body of another child.
In this contrary poem Blake makes a more direct and powerful attack on the shameful presence of so much poverty "in a rich and fruitful land" (l.2).

"Is this a holy thing to see"

Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land—
Babes (1) reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy—
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine,
And their fields are bleak (2) and bare,
And their ways are filled with thorns;
It is eternal winter there!

For wher'er (3) the sun does shine,
And wher'er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appal.

(William Blake, Songs of Experience.)

Notes:

1. babes: (literary) babies.
2. bleak: dreary.
3. wher'er: wherever.
4. hunger: feel hunger.
5. appal: greatly horrify.

FACT AND SYMBOL

A reader of William Blake's two chimney sweeper songs needs little more information concerning eighteenth century "climbing boys" than the songs provide, in order to grasp their general humanitarian and symbolic significance. Yet familiarity with some additional details does, I think, help us see more clearly Blake's indictment of a society that allows children to be subjected to almost unbelievably wretched conditions, and it also gives more force and point to the symbolism. For in the songs Blake does not really describe the living and working conditions of the sweeps; he presupposes a knowledge of them. Writing at the time of the passage of the "Chimney Sweepers' Act" of 1788, when newspapers and reformers like Jonas Hanway were publicizing the treatment of the sweeps, Blake could depend on his readers' being aware of the facts in a way that modern readers are not. And he can therefore express his deep outrage obliquely and ironically, through the understated discourse of boys who, in the symbolic context of Songs of Innocence & of Experience, have somehow learned to preserve their humanity in circumstances that are all but completely dehumanizing. The details of chimney sweeping [...] do not, to be sure, reveal the poems in a new light. But a more sharply delineated picture of the lives of the sweeps than Blake's speakers in the poems can give strengthens our awareness of the ironic disparity between the tone of the boys' discourse and the conditions they allude to; it helps us to see some of the imagery of the poems a little more vividly; and it sets some badly needed limits on symbolic interpretations of the poems.
As any reader of Oliver Twist is aware, the boys were indeed boys, the smaller the better. When Blake's sweep of Innocence says,

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry "'weep! 'weep! 'weep" 'weep!"

he is not exaggerating. Although the usual age at which children became sweeps, or apprentices, was six or seven, some did so at five or even four. And the world "sold" is to be taken quite literally. Unlike the usual apprenticeship, in which the fee is paid to the master, binding children—both boys and girls—to a master sweep usually brought a payment ranging from twenty shillings to five guineas from the master to the parent, if there was one, or to whoever had the child at the time. Ostensibly the child was apprenticed for seven years, after which he was usually too large to go up small chimneys; but after his apprenticeship he was by no means assured of a living as a journeyman, since there was not enough work to go around. Often he was left to the parish to support, not only because work was scarce but because he was physically unable to work. Chimney sweeping left children with kneecaps twisted and spines and ankles deformed, from crawling up chimneys as small as nine or even seven inches in diameter, with "chimney sweep's cancer" of the scrotum resulting from the constant irritation of the soot, with respiratory ailments, [illnesses] and eye inflammation.
Their living and working conditions were almost incredibly wretched. Although some masters took reasonably good care of their sweeps, most, to judge from evidence given before parliamentary committees and other contemporary sources, kept them worse than animals. Sweeps arose literally "in the dark" and worked until about noon, when they "cried the streets" for more business until it was time to return, carrying heavy bags of soot, to the cellars and attics where they slept, often not on mattresses or even straw but on the bags of soot they had swept. When Blake's sweep says "in soot I sleep," he is not talking metaphorically. Soot is his element day and night. Nor was there much relief from it, even temporarily, for sweeps often went without washing for six months.

(Martin K. Nurmi, "Fact and Symbol in "The Chimney Sweeper" of Blake's "Songs of Innocence", in Blake, A Collection of Critical Essays, Edited by Northrop Frye, Prentice Hall, 1966.)

MILTON

A Poem in 2 Books
To Justify the Ways of God to Men

This narrative poem has four parts: 1) the Bard's song; 2) Milton's journey to self-renewal; 3) the journey of Ololon, Milton's emanation, seeking him; 4) a description of the works of Los, which is really a digression.
The starting-point of Blake's Milton is the poet's belief in the importance of the artist in national life. Milton had been the greatest, most inspired English poet, yet he had gone into error. The poet should show others the eternal world of imaginative truth, and act as a national seer and leader, but Milton had shown a false imagine of God as a law-giving tyrant beyond the clouds, not as a merciful brother among and in men. Blake's view was contrary to Milton's, that's why the poem Milton is an imaginary narrative describing how Milton's soul in heaven was purified, and how the malign influence of the old Milton was to be countered when the spirit of the new Milton descended, in another generation, to Blake himself.
As we have pointed out in portraying the Romantic Period and Blake's poetic vision of reality, the many social evils of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were the slave trade, the treatment of the poor, and the new growing threat of industrialization. In Milton Blake's "dark Satanic mills" represent the image of a society that grinds, crushes man himself. He wonders whether "was Jerusalem builded here / Among these dark Satanic mills?"
In the lines of this introduction Blake imagines that before the Fall England was a Holy Land and London a Holy City, the Jerusalem of the Bible. The Fall of man has separated them, and reduced London to the state in which London can be seen now. The phrase "dark Satanic mills" (l.25) describes London as a place of slavery. Blake's literary source for the us of "mill" is Milton's dramatic poem Samson Agonistes. The phrase which is usually considered a reference to the mills built for the new industrial factories, in Blake's vision refers to Satan's enslavement of the mind, ("The mind-forged manacles" of the song "London"); Satan is the origin of human error and Fall. The evils of the Industrial Revolution stress the presence of Satan with his dark mills in Albion (Britain, or England). That's why the Blake, the Prophet-Poet, says he will continue his "mental fight" (l. 30) "Till we have built Jerusalem,/ In England's green and pleasant land." (ll. 32-33).

Preface

The stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to contemn,(1) are set up by artifice (2) against the sublime of the Bible. But when the new age is at leisure to pronounce, all will be set right, & these grand works of the more ancient, and consciously & professedly inspired men, will hold their proper rank, & the daughters of memory (3) shall become the daughters of inspiration. Shakespeare & Milton were both curbed by the general malady & infection from the silly Greek & Latin slaves of the sword.(4)
Rouse up, O young men of the new age! Set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings! (5) For we have hirelings in the camp, the court and the university, who would, if they could, for ever depress mental and prolong corporeal war. (6) Painters, on you I call! Sculpotors! Architects! Suffer not the fashionable fools (7) to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works or the expensive advertising boasts that they make of such works; believe Christ & his apostles that there is a class of men whose whole delight is in destroying.(8) We do not want either Greek or Roman models, if we are but just & true to our own imaginations, those worlds of eternity in which we shall live for ever -- in Jesus our Lord.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded (9) here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold;
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my spear—O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!(10)

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant land.

Would to God that all the Lord's people were prophets!

Notes:

1. contemn: despise.
2. by artifice: artificially. They are not "naturally" the chief writings of the world.
3. daughters of memory: According to later Greek mythology, they were the nine Muses, the daughters of Mnemosyne, or memory.
4. slaves of the sword: Homer's and Virgil's epics dealt with war.
5. hirelings: persons who work for hire.
6. mental and prolong corporeal war: The first war is the creative strife of minds and ideas; the second is the destructive war of the arms.
7. fashionable fools: Ignorant patrons who admire art because it is is fashionable to do so.
8. a class of men ... destroying: a class of artists whose delight is the destruction of men.
9. Jerusalem builded: Was Jerusalem, the city of God, here, where Satan's mills now are?
10. chariot of fire: the chariot in which the prophet Elijah was carried to heaven.

STUDENT'S ESSAYS

1. Write a short essay discussing Blake's view of "Heaven" and "Hell", "Good"
and "Evil", and quote from his poems.

2. Compare Burns's poem "A Red, Red Rose", and Blake's "Sick Rose". First expound the two poems, then analyse their figures of speech and the symbolism they convey.

3. Compare and comment on Blake's two poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger." Contrast Blake's views and attitudes in these two paired and contrary poems and say what Blake tries to emphasize by means of these contrasts.

4. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience deals with two separate areas of content and symbolism. In this work the view is held that "Happiness turns to grief, and content to rebellion". Say to what extent this view suggests the main lines of development between the two groups of songs.

5. Write a short essay on the role of the child and childhood in Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.

6. After describing the social and economic conditions of Blake's time, write a short essay on Blake as a critic of society and a poet of his time.

7. Comment in a short written essay Blake's figure as a religious and prophet poet.

PAGINA IN COSTRUZIONE

SITO A CURA DI DOMENICO FURCI