Introduction

The notes which follow are intended for study and revision of a selection of Blake's poems.

About the poet

William Blake was born on 28 November 1757, and died on 12 August 1827. He spent his life largely in London, save for the years 1800 to 1803, when he lived in a cottage at Felpham, near the seaside town of Bognor, in Sussex. In 1767 he began to attend Henry Pars's drawing school in the Strand. At the age of fifteen, Blake was apprenticed to an engraver, making plates from which pictures for books were printed. He later went to the Royal Academy, and at 22, he was employed as an engraver to a bookseller and publisher. When he was nearly 25, Blake married Catherine Bouchier. They had no children but were happily married for almost 45 years. In 1784, a year after he published his first volume of poems, Blake set up his own engraving business.

Many of Blake's best poems are found in two collections: Songs of Innocence (1789) to which was added, in 1794, the Songs of Experience (unlike the earlier work, never published on its own). The complete 1794 collection was called Songs of Innocence and Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Broadly speaking the collections look at human nature and society in optimistic and pessimistic terms, respectively - and Blake thinks that you need both sides to see the whole truth.

Blake had very firm ideas about how his poems should appear. Although spelling was not as standardised in print as it is today, Blake was writing some time after the publication of Dr. Johnson's authoritative Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Many of Blake's spellings which seem odd or old-fashioned to us, must have struck his readers, too, as quaint. Blake similarly used non-standard forms of punctuation, especially using the ampersand (&) in place of the word "and" (today this is only normal in business names). In keeping with his profession, Blake did not print his poems in type, but engraved them (like handwriting) on an illustrated background. The printed copies were then coloured by hand: Blake was an artist in words and pictures. In some modern editions for students (such as the AQA Anthology, used by people taking GCSE exams in England), the spelling and punctuation have been modernised in standard forms; type replaces handwriting and no pictures appear - you should look at copies of the poems as Blake produced them, in order to decide whether this is a good or bad thing. The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found

Both of these poems appear (together) in Songs of Innocence. The titles more or less tell the reader what the poems are about. In the first, a father leaves behind his tearful child in the dark. In the second, as the child cries, God appears, kisses the child and restores him to his mother who has been crying and looking for the boy. InThe Songs of Experience are two (very different) poems called A Little BOY Lost andA Little GIRL Lost. They are both horrible, especially the former, in which a priest accuses a boy of blasphemy (for not showing God enough love), puts him in an "iron chair" and burns him to death "in a holy place" where "many had been burned before", while his parents look on and weep.

The poems in detail

The three human characters are not at all specific people but clearly representative or universal types - like people in the parables of Jesus. (This is true of all the people we meet in The Songs of Innocence and Experience, though sometimes there are distinguishing features as with the children in The Little Black Boy or The Chimney Sweeper, where the sweep is called Tom Dacre.) In this poem, God appears, too but not as an abstract idea (a view of God that Blake hated). He is like the God of the Book of Genesis (who walks in the Garden of Eden and shuts up Noah in the Ark).

The first half of The Little Boy Lost is a cry of alarm from the child - he asks where his father is going, tells him to slow down and asks the father to speak, or else his "little boy" will be lost. Instead of the father's expected reply comes the shocking discovery - where the reader shares the child's horror - that the father is gone, and it is dark night. The dew is forming and the boy is in a deep mire (muddy or marshy ground). As the boy cries, the mist goes away - perhaps a hint that something good will happen.

The reader is not very alarmed - for two reasons.

 First, all the Songs of Innocence have happy endings of sorts, and

 second, the reader may have seen that there is another poem called The Little Boy Found.

In The Little Boy Found we see another hopeful sign - the boy is being guided by some kind of "wandering light". It may belong to the father who has left him, or may suggest (in the word "led") a guardian angel or spirit. As the boy cries, God comes to his aid - in white, which suggests his goodness. God is also "like his father", which may mean he looks like the father who earlier deserted the boy, or may suggest the idea that God is the boy's (and everyone's) real father - more so than any earthly parent.

The father, who leaves the boy, is contrasted with the anxious mother who goes in search of him, "pale" with sorrow and weeping (though Blake may mean "weeping" to refer to the "little boy"). God brings the child back to his mother. Attentive readers will see that she has no hope of finding the boy without God's help. Why? Because she has been looking in the wrong place - the "lonely dale" (a valley), while the boy has been in a marsh ("mire") or "fen". (Unless Blake means us to understand that the fen is in the valley - which is possible.)

The poems also appeal to one of our most basic fears - or rather two:

 our fear, if we are children, of being lost or left behind by our parents and

 our fear (perhaps even greater), if we are parents, of losing a child. (This is amplified by real-life reports of abductions and violence to children - and is one of the most profound and terrifying fears we ever face. For many readers, The Little Boy Lost will be far scarier than any conventional horror story or film.)

The poet's method

Blake's narratives, simply as stories, are very naïve and childlike. But they tell of profound and universal experiences or ideas. We worry about children who really get lost - and any young child has fears (perhaps made stronger by parents' warnings) of being lost or separated from mother or father.

The two poems thus form a narrative in two parts - being lost and being found. It also contrasts the way that human parents fail with God's power and love in caring for children. There is a very similar but much more detailed story in Chapter 7 of The Wind in the Willows ("The Piper at the Gates of Dawn") where little Portly the otter is lost but restored to his worried parents with the help of the animals' god, Pan.

Blake does not use metaphors - where something in the poem represents some other thing, usually an abstraction, in a one-to-one way. Rather he uses symbols - and leaves it to the reader to decide what they mean. So we may understand God in the poem as being more or less the same as in Genesis, or, very differently, as the divine element in good people who look after children. And we may see the poem as being about a real child getting lost in a fen, or about the way in which generally, we are unsure about the world and our place in it.

The poems are very short - each has only two stanzas, and the pair together have a mere 16 lines. Although the narrative seems to be stripped down to its essentials, there is room for some suggestive details - so we read

 that God is "in white",

 that the "vapour" (mist, presumably) flies away,

 that a "wandering light" leads the child and

 that he is lost in a fen, while his mother seeks him in a dale.

With this poet, we can never quite be sure how far these things are intentional and how far they are simply suggested by the need for a rhyme - but it is wiser to suppose that Blake means exactly what he says (or writes) in the Songs of Innocence and Experience. The Tyger

Blake was regarded in his time as very strange, but many of his ideas make sense to the modern reader. When this poem was written it was most unusual for writers to show interest in wild animals. People did not have access to wildlife documentaries on television, as we do today: exotic animals might be seen in circuses and zoos, but tigers would be a rarity, perhaps turning up stuffed or as rugs (this was to become very common in the 19th century). Just as today the tiger is a symbol of (endangered) wildlife, so for Blake, the animal is important as a symbol - but of what? One clue is to be found in the comparison with The Lamb (see the next poem, and the fifth stanza of this one). Blake's images defy simple explanation: we cannot be certain what he wants us to think the tiger represents, but something of the majesty and power of God's creation in the natural world seems to be present.

Blake's spelling in the title (The Tyger) at once suggests the exotic or alien quality of the beast. The memorable opening couplet (pair of rhyming lines) points to the contrast of the dark "forest of the night" (which suggests an unknown and hostile place) and the intense "burning" brightness of the tiger's colouring: Blake writes here with a painter's eye.

The questions that follow are directed at the tiger, though they are as much questions for the reader. They are of the kind sometimes called rhetorical (frequently used in public speaking, rhetoric in Greek) because no answer is given. However, these are questions to which the answer is far from obvious. For example, the answer to the first question might be "God's" ("immortal hand or eye"), but Blake is asking not so much "whose?" as "what kind of?" We are challenged to imagine someone or something so powerful as to be able to create this animal. The idea that the tiger is made by someone with hands and eyes suggests the stories in the Biblical book of Genesis, where God walks in the Garden of Eden and shuts Noah in his ark. It is again the painter and engraver who observes the complexity of the tiger's markings in their "fearful symmetry". The sensitive human artist is awe-struck by the divine artistry.

Blake asks where the fire in the tiger's eyes originates. It is as if some utterly daring person has seized this fire and given it to the tiger (as, in Greek myth, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to men). The poet is amazed at the complexity of the tiger's inner workings ("the sinews of thy heart"), at the greater power that set the heart beating, and wonders how the animal's brain was forged: "What the hammer...in what furnace...what the anvil?"

The penultimate (last but one) stanza takes us back to Genesis and the creation story there: on each of the six days (He rested on the seventh) God looked at His work and "saw that it was good". God is represented as being pleased with His creation, but Blake wonders whether this can be true of the tiger. If so, it is not easy to see how the same creator should have made The Lamb. The poem appropriately ends, apparently with the same question with which it started, but the change of verb from "could" to "dare" makes it even more forceful.

This poem is not so much about the tiger as it really is, or as a zoologist might present it to us; it is the Tyger, as it appears to the eye of the beholder. Blake imagines the tiger as the embodiment of God's power in creation: the animal is terrifying in its beauty, strength, complexity and vitality. The Lamb

In The Tyger Blake points to the contrast between these two animals: the tiger is fierce, active, predatory, while The Lamb is meek, vulnerable and harmless. In the first stanza Blake, as in The Tyger, asks questions, and these are again directed to the animal, although the reader has less difficulty guessing the answer, which the poet in any case gives in the second stanza. The picture of The Lamb's feeding "by the stream and o'er the mead" (=meadow) is a beautiful one, which suggests God's kindness in creation, and has an echo of similar descriptions in the Old Testament book of Psalms (especially Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want") and the parables of Jesus.

In the second stanza, Blake reminds The Lamb, and us, that the God who made The Lamb, also is like The Lamb. As well as becoming a child (like the speaker of the poem) Jesus became known as The Lamb of God: Jesus was crucified during the Feast of the Passover (celebrating the Jews' escape from Egypt) when lambs were slaughtered in the temple at Jerusalem. This was believed to take away the sins of the people who took part in the feast. So when Jesus was killed, for the sins of all people, according to the Christian faith, He came to be called The Lamb of God. Although this is an image mainly of meekness and self-sacrifice, in the last book of the Bible (Revelation) Jesus appears as a Lamb with divine powers, who defeats the Anti-Christ and saves mankind. Blake's poem seems to be mainly about God's love shown in his care for The Lamb and the child and about the apparent paradox, that God became both child and Lamb in coming, as Jesus, into the world.

The Tyger and The Lamb go well together, because in them, Blake examines different, almost opposite or contradictory, ideas about the natural world, its creatures and their Creator. How do you see the two animals depicted? What images do you find interesting, and what do they tell you?

The 1794 collection, remember, was called Songs of Innocence and Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul: explain how these poems show "contrary states".

How, in these two poems, does Blake explore different ideas about God and nature? Which do you find more appealing (if either) and why?

Both poems use simple rhymes and regular metre. Does this mean the ideas in the poems are simple, too? Give reasons for your answer.

A useful exercise here (as with all the poems) is to present the poems either as Blake did (this will require some research), or as you imagine he might have done. That is to say, you should use a handwriting style which seems appropriate, and illustrate/decorate the background or surrounding area. You could use this copy for familiarising yourself with the poems. You might like to use Blake's original spelling and punctuation (your teacher should be able to give you a copy of this). A Poison Tree

In this poem and the two which follow it, a central metaphor explains a truth of human nature. A Poison Tree shares with The Human Abstract the image of a tree as it grows, while in London the image is of manacles: all of these Songs of Experience show the dark side of human nature. A Poison Tree tells how anger can be dispelled by goodwill or nurtured to become a deadly poison. It is appropriate that poems touching on Biblical themes should be parables, not unlike those of Jesus, in which a spiritual or abstract meaning is expressed in a vivid, picturesque story.

The opening stanza is among the most deceptively simple and memorable of all Blake's lyrics: the form of each couplet is grammatically the same, but substituting four words wholly alters the meaning, from the ending of anger with the "friend" to the continuing anger with the "foe".

Blake does not tell us what is growing (although we may guess this to be the tree of the title) but it is evidently a plant of some kind: the real "fears" and "tears" are what metaphorically water the plant (encourage his hatred?), and "smiles" and "deceitful wiles" are as the sunshine which makes it grow: the reader at once grasps the simple natural metaphor, and the deep psychological truth it expresses. At length the tree grows to bear a single fruit, which the "foe" wants because he supposes the speaker to value it: "And he knew that it was mine". The sequel is shocking: the foe steals the apple and eats it, not knowing that it is poisonous: "In the morning glad I see/My foe outstretched beneath the tree". As we remember that this is a metaphor we realise that literal murder (of the body) is not what Blake describes but some profound spiritual, or (as we would now say) psychological harm is meant.

This is a horrible poem because it depicts with appalling honesty the hatred of which man is capable and the cunning with which we can conceal our anger. The anger depicted here is not the anger we call the heat of the moment, but "wrath", one of the seven deadly sins, a brooding, festering desire to get even at all costs.

The apple of the third stanza reminds us of the story of Adam and Eve. In the biblical account, God forbids the couple to eat the fruit of "the tree of knowledge", but this fruit is commonly represented as an apple (this detail appears in mediaeval carols and in Milton's poem, Paradise Lost). Another apple which caused trouble was the golden apple from the garden of the Hesperides, which Paris, prince of Troy, gave to Aphrodite, goddess of love, in preference to Athena and Hera. As a symbol of irresistible temptation, the apple is deeply convincing.

The enemy is almost as wily as the speaker, waiting until a night which has "veiled the pole". This "pole" could mean simply the hemisphere which surrounds the pole or, some critics suggest, the Pole Star: a very bright star used for navigation; if this is what Blake means then a night which "veiled the pole" (with fog, say) would be exceptionally black. The metaphor suggests the darkness, the inscrutable mystery of evil: we cannot see it at work, but we can see its results later. Perhaps, though, the most shocking word in the poem is "glad". This is not the innocent gladness of a clear conscience, but the almost diabolical self-satisfaction of the poisoner. The triumphal gloating is miles away from the simple reconciliation of the poem's opening couplet. The poem perfectly unites the simple extended image, and the deep human truth it illustrates. The Human Abstract

The title and the last stanza of this poem make it clear that the tree described here is a symbol of an "abstract" quality found in "the human brain". This is less easy to understand than the evil of anger, which Blake explains in A Poison Tree, but again the poet is aware of the "Two Contrary States of the Human Soul" and the "Mystery" (Stanza 4) of the tree which "bears the fruit of deceit", and in which the Raven, the omen of death, "his nest has made".

The poem's opening reminds us of Jesus words to Judas Iscariot (John's Gospel, Chapter 12, verse 8): "the poor always ye have with you". What was meant by Jesus as a shrewd comment on poverty (that it will never wholly go away) has been taken by some readers of the gospels to be a kind of universal law: that there must be losers if there are also to be winners, and Blake states this idea in his opening couplet: that "pity" (compassion, a good thing) depends on there being some people who are "poor". The key word here is "make" - as if we force people into poverty so that they can receive our "pity". Instead of a fair society, the rich give handouts to the poor, and feel smug about doing so. In the same way, happiness is not allowed to be universal, or no-one would need "Mercy". Blake may be merely describing the way things are. If he is suggesting how things ought to be, then he does so ironically: he certainly does not approve of this inequality. The ideas in this first stanza are clearly relevant to our own times, but would have been thought very shocking in Blake's time, when British society was organised on principles of clear inequality.

In the four central stanzas, Blake's argument becomes less clear, but a number of things are worthy of note: that "peace", usually a good thing, may be the result of "mutual fear" (Blake anticipates in a single line the modern idea of deterrence - that peace is achieved by would-be enemies living in fear of each other), and how, in "The Human Abstract", good things like "holy fears", "tears" and "Humility", are mixed up with wickedness - "mutual fear", "the selfish loves" and "cruelty" - in "the dismal shade/Of Mystery". Cruelty, as he "knits a snare" or "spreads his baits" is likened to a pitiless hunter (snares and baits would be used to catch small game; "his" suggests a person, not an abstraction) while the idea of sickness or corruption is suggested by the "Catterpiller and Fly" which "Feed on the (tree of) Mystery". As in A Poison Treethere is attractive fruit, though we do not know who is to eat it. The "thickest shade", where the "Raven" nests, suggests the secrecy and obscurity of the "Human Abstract" here described.

The final stanza gives us the key to the poem: the "Gods" sought "in vain" in the natural world for such a tree, but the poet knows it is found "in the Human Brain" - that its existence is real, but metaphorical, rather than literal. The tree and its fruit suggest particularly the tree, in Genesis, of the knowledge of good and evil: as man has eaten the fruit of this tree, so he has gained this forbidden knowledge, which is particularly the subject of the poem's first two stanzas.

This poem is hard to understand in its entirety, but rewards close study. It contains some striking images, and the opening stanza is a challenging statement of the problems faced by those who want to create a fair society - or, perhaps, of the reasons why a fair society will never be realised. The poem obviously has much in common with A Poison Tree in Blake's choice of central metaphor, and in how this image is developed to symbolise, in complex ways, truths about human nature which would be less clear and interesting if explained in abstract terms. London

This is a poem which makes sense to the modern reader, as it exposes the gulf between those in power and the misery of poor people. The picture of the city as a place of nightmare is common in the 20th century, but is perhaps surprising to find in such an early text as this. We have to wait for the novels of Dickens and James Thomson's Victorian poem The City of Dreadful Night, before we find such a grim view of the city reappearing.

Although there are several details which we need to note, we should begin with the central metaphor of this poem, the "mind-forg'd manacles" of the second stanza. Once more a vivid symbol explains a deep human truth. The image of the forge appears in The Tyger (stanza 4). Here Blake imagines the mind as a forge where "manacles" are made. "Manacles" (for the hands - French les mains) and shackles for the legs, would be seen on convicts, perhaps passing along the streets on their way to prison or, commonly in London in Blake's time, on their way to ships, for transportation to Australia. For Blake and his readers, the image is a very striking and contemporary one: they will have seen "manacles" and will view them with horror. The image is also an allusion (reference, loose quotation) to an even more famous statement. In 1762, some thirty years before Blake wrote London, the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract: "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains". Blake agrees with Rousseau that man's lack of freedom, his "manacles" are "mind-forg'd" - they come from the ideas and outlook imposed on us by external authority.

We see this beautifully in the poem's opening: it is a matter of fact that charters were granted to powerful people to control the streets of London and even the river. It is absurd that the streets are "chartered" (not free to ordinary people) but blatantly so in the case of the mighty river, which cannot really be controlled by the passing of a law. Blake writes ironically of "the chartered Thames". The "weakness" and the "woe" (a strong word in 1794; =misery) of every person is plain to see "in every face", as in their cries, whether of adults or babies (stanza 2).

Blake gives us three powerful examples of this "weakness" and "woe", starting with the chimney- sweep. As the church building is literally "black'ning" with smoke from the chimneys, so the church as an organisation, which should help the poor, is blackened, metaphorically, with shame at its failure to give that help. The church should be appalled, as the poet evidently is, by the cry of the "chimney-sweeper". (There is a pun here: "appals" means "goes pale", as with fear, but these churches are going black, with smoke and soot.)

The second image, of the "hapless" (unfortunate) soldier is topical: the poem was written shortly after the start of the French Revolution: this was so bloody an uprising that the figure of speech called hyperbole (=exaggeration) was often used, as blood was said to be running down the walls. Blake shows how the unhappiness of the English soldier could, if its causes were ignored, lead to similar bloodshed here.

But the last image is the most shocking to Blake, as to us: the cry of the child-prostitute is the truth behind respectable ideas of marriage. New birth is no happy event but continues the cycle of misery, and the wedding carriage is seen as a hearse, leading to a kind of death (of innocence? of happiness?). The word "plagues" here suggests the sexually transmitted diseases which the "youthful harlot" would contract and pass on to others (men married for convenience but with no desire for their wives), giving her cursing words real destructive power. Blake's subjects and themes

Although you could consider these apart, in all five of the poems there is a clear connection between the outward subjects and the deeper truths they express. ThusThe Tyger and The Lamb are apparently about a wild and a tame animal, but are really about God's power in creation or the power of the natural world and the nature of God as shown in Jesus. A Poison Tree and The Human Abstract seem to be about mysterious trees with dangerous fruit, but really tell of the "contrary states of the human soul", while London is obviously about the way some people live unhappy lives but at a deeper level is about how "every" person is miserable.

Argument, structure and form

In The Tyger and The Lamb the argument takes the form of a conversation with the animal, to which many questions are addressed (in The Lamb Blake gives the answers). A Poison Tree and The Human Abstract tell short stories, while Londonappears to describe a personal experience of walking "thro' midnight streets", expressed in terms of three encounters. The Lamb has a simple form which reflects the structure: one longish stanza of questions, and an equally long stanza of answers. In all the other poems (four or six) four-line stanzas are used to carry the argument. These are in rhyming couplets, except for London with its more elaborate ABAB rhyme-scheme.

Key images

In discussing Blake's poetry it is virtually impossible not to spot what the images are but sometimes almost impossible to say what they mean! In three of the poems, the central image appears in the title; in The Human Abstract the title gives the meaning of the central image, while in London the key image is found in the second stanza. The other important details (of extended metaphors) like the "apple" or the raven's "nest" or related images, like "the chartered Thames" or "the marriage hearse" are discussed in the detailed commentaries above.

We might also comment on where these images come from. Blake's poems are full of references to nature, but these are not made from direct observation as a naturalist or a poet like Wordsworth makes them: rather nature is understood as in a book for children or in the Bible: we find exotic, fiery tigers, innocent, woolly lambs, magical trees bearing deadly fruit and sinister caterpillars and ravens. The town, which Blake does know, is depicted essentially realistically in London. All of the poems draw on the Bible for their images (in London this is less obvious, but the "harlot" and the "new-born infant" can both be found in the Bible).

Other effects

Reading these poems might lead you to think that Blake had a very narrow vocabulary, but this is not the case. He makes deliberate repeated use not only of a given word, but a given (often unoriginal) rhyming pair, like "fears" and "tears" (find this twice; then find "spears" and "tears", and "hear" and "tear"). In these poems Blake is striving for simplicity (which is why they are Songs). He writes the poems like folk-ballads or nursery-rhymes, almost. What he is saying seems so obvious that we can attend to (a far harder question) what it means. But often the simple style hides a very clever expression. Equally, it is difficult to say what Blake has said without using many more words, as with his comment on the "black'ning church" inLondon. Blake is especially fond of repetition, either of a whole sentence form (in the opening stanza of A Poison Tree) or a single word or short phrase (as with "In every..." in London). SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

William Blake was born in London in 1757. His father, a hosier, soon recognized his son’s artistic talents and sent him to study at a drawing school when he was ten years old. At 14, William asked to be apprenticed to the engraver James Basire, under whose direction he further developed his innate skills. As a young man Blake worked as an engraver, illustrator, and drawing teacher, and met such artists as Henry Fuseli and John Flaxman, as well as Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose classicizing style he would later come to reject. Blake wrote poems during this time as well, and his first printed collection, an immature and rather derivative volume called Poetical Sketches, appeared in 1783.Songs of Innocence was published in 1789, followed by Songs of Experience in 1793 and a combined edition the next year bearing the title Songs of Innocence and Experience showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

Blake’s political radicalism intensified during the years leading up to the French Revolution. He began a seven-book poem about the Revolution, in fact, but it was either destroyed or never completed, and only the first book survives. He disapproved of Enlightenment rationalism, of institutionalized religion, and of the tradition of marriage in its conventional legal and social form (though he was married himself). His unorthodox religious thinking owes a debt to the Swedish philosopher Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), whose influence is particularly evident in Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In the 1790s and after, he shifted his poetic voice from the lyric to the prophetic mode, and wrote a series of long prophetic books, including Milton and Jerusalem. Linked together by an intricate mythology and symbolism of Blake’s own creation, these books propound a revolutionary new social, intellectual, and ethical order.

Blake published almost all of his works himself, by an original process in which the poems were etched by hand, along with illustrations and decorative images, onto copper plates. These plates were inked to make prints, and the prints were then colored in with paint. This expensive and labor-intensive production method resulted in a quite limited circulation of Blake’s poetry during his life. It has also posed a special set of challenges to scholars of Blake’s work, which has interested both literary critics and art historians. Most students of Blake find it necessary to consider his graphic art and his writing together; certainly he himself thought of them as inseparable. During his own lifetime, Blake was a pronounced failure, and he harbored a good deal of resentment and anxiety about the public’s apathy toward his work and about the financial straits in which he so regularly found himself. When his self-curated exhibition of his works met with financial failure in 1809, Blake sank into depression and withdrew into obscurity; he remained alienated for the rest of his life. His contemporaries saw him as something of an eccentric—as indeed he was. Suspended between the neoclassicism of the 18th century and the early phases of Romanticism, Blake belongs to no single poetic school or age. Only in the 20th century did wide audiences begin to acknowledge his profound originality and genius.

Analysis →

Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of childhood against an adult world of corruption and repression; while such poems as “The Lamb”represent a meek virtue, poems like “The Tyger” exhibit opposing, darker forces. Thus the collection as a whole explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the world. Many of the poems fall into pairs, so that the same situation or problem is seen through the lens of innocence first and then experience. Blake does not identify himself wholly with either view; most of the poems are dramatic—that is, in the voice of a speaker other than the poet himself. Blake stands outside innocence and experience, in a distanced position from which he hopes to be able to recognize and correct the fallacies of both. In particular, he pits himself against despotic authority, restrictive morality, sexual repression, and institutionalized religion; his great insight is into the way these separate modes of control work together to squelch what is most holy in human beings.

The Songs of Innocence dramatize the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and trace their transformation as the child grows into adulthood. Some of the poems are written from the perspective of children, while others are about children as seen from an adult perspective. Many of the poems draw attention to the positive aspects of natural human understanding prior to the corruption and distortion of experience. Others take a more critical stance toward innocent purity: for example, while Blake draws touching portraits of the emotional power of rudimentary Christian values, he also exposes—over the heads, as it were, of the innocent—Christianity’s capacity for promoting injustice and cruelty.

The Songs of Experience work via parallels and contrasts to lament the ways in which the harsh experiences of adult life destroy what is good in innocence, while also articulating the weaknesses of the innocent perspective (“The Tyger,” for example, attempts to account for real, negative forces in the universe, which innocence fails to confront). These latter poems treat sexual morality in terms of the repressive effects of jealousy, shame, and secrecy, all of which corrupt the ingenuousness of innocent love. With regard to religion, they are less concerned with the character of individual faith than with the institution of the Church, its role in politics, and its effects on society and the individual mind. Experience thus adds a layer to innocence that darkens its hopeful vision while compensating for some of its blindness.

The style of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is simple and direct, but the language and the rhythms are painstakingly crafted, and the ideas they explore are often deceptively complex. Many of the poems are narrative in style; others, like“The Sick Rose” and “The Divine Image,” make their arguments through symbolism or by means of abstract concepts. Some of Blake’s favorite rhetorical techniques are personification and the reworking of Biblical symbolism and language. Blake frequently employs the familiar meters of ballads, nursery rhymes, and hymns, applying them to his own, often unorthodox conceptions. This combination of the traditional with the unfamiliar is consonant with Blake’s perpetual interest in reconsidering and reframing the assumptions of human thought and social behavior. “The Lamb”

The poem begins with the question, “Little Lamb, who made thee?” The speaker, a child, asks the lamb about its origins: how it came into being, how it acquired its particular manner of feeding, its “clothing” of wool, its “tender voice.” In the next stanza, the speaker attempts a riddling answer to his own question: the lamb was made by one who “calls himself a Lamb,” one who resembles in his gentleness both the child and the lamb. The poem ends with the child bestowing a blessing on the lamb.

Form

“The Lamb” has two stanzas, each containing five rhymed couplets. Repetition in the first and last couplet of each stanza makes these lines into a refrain, and helps to give the poem its song-like quality. The flowing l’s and soft vowel sounds contribute to this effect, and also suggest the bleating of a lamb or the lisping character of a child’s chant.

Commentary

The poem is a child’s song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza is rural and descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains explanation and analogy. The child’s question is both naive and profound. The question (“who made thee?”) is a simple one, and yet the child is also tapping into the deep and timeless questions that all human beings have, about their own origins and the nature of creation. The poem’s apostrophic form contributes to the effect of naiveté, since the situation of a child talking to an animal is a believable one, and not simply a literary contrivance. Yet by answering his own question, the child converts it into a rhetorical one, thus counteracting the initial spontaneous sense of the poem. The answer is presented as a puzzle or riddle, and even though it is an easy one—child’s play—this also contributes to an underlying sense of ironic knowingness or artifice in the poem. The child’s answer, however, reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and his innocent acceptance of its teachings.

The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores the Christian values of gentleness, meekness, and peace. The image of the child is also associated with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for children, and the Bible’s depiction of Jesus in his childhood shows him as guileless and vulnerable. These are also the characteristics from which the child-speaker approaches the ideas of nature and of God. This poem, like many of the Songs of Innocence, accepts what Blake saw as the more positive aspects of conventional Christian belief. But it does not provide a completely adequate doctrine, because it fails to account for the presence of suffering and evil in the world. The pendant (or companion) poem to this one, found in the Songs of Experience,is “The Tyger”; taken together, the two poems give a perspective on religion that includes the good and clear as well as the terrible and inscrutable. These poems complement each other to produce a fuller account than either offers independently. They offer a good instance of how Blake himself stands somewhere outside the perspectives of innocence and experience he projects. “The Little Black Boy”

A black child tells the story of how he came to know his own identity and to know God. The boy, who was born in “the southern wild” of Africa, first explains that though his skin is black his soul is as white as that of an English child. He relates how his loving mother taught him about God who lives in the East, who gives light and life to all creation and comfort and joy to men. “We are put on earth,” his mother says, to learn to accept God’s love. He is told that his black skin “is but a cloud” that will be dissipated when his soul meets God in heaven. The black boy passes on this lesson to an English child, explaining that his white skin is likewise a cloud. He vows that when they are both free of their bodies and delighting in the presence of God, he will shade his white friend until he, too, learns to bear the heat of God’s love. Then, the black boy says, he will be like the English boy, and the English boy will love him.

Form

The poem is in heroic quatrains, which are stanzas of pentameter lines rhyming ABAB. The form is a variation on the ballad stanza, and the slightly longer lines are well suited to the pedagogical tone of this poem.

Commentary

This poem centers on a spiritual awakening to a divine love that transcends race. The speaker is an African child who has to come to terms with his own blackness. Blake builds the poem on clear imagery of light and dark. The contrast in the first stanza between the child’s black skin and his belief in the whiteness of his soul lends poignancy to his particular problem of self-understanding. In a culture in which black and white connote bad and good, respectively, the child’s developing sense of self requires him to perform some fairly elaborate symbolic gymnastics with these images of color. His statement that he is “black as if bereav’d of light” underscores the gravity of the problem. The gesture of his song will be to counteract this “as if” in a way that shows him to be as capable and deserving of perfect love as a white person is.

The child’s mother symbolizes a natural and selfless love that becomes the poem’s ideal. She shows a tender concern for her child’s self-esteem, as well as a strong desire that he know the comfort of God. She persuades him, according to conventional Christian doctrine, that earthly life is but a preparation for the rewards of heaven. In this context, their dark skin is similarly but a temporary appearance, with no bearing on their eternal essence: skin, which is a factor only in this earthly life, becomes irrelevant from the perspective of heaven. Body and soul, black and white, and earth and heaven are all aligned in a rhetorical gesture that basically confirms the stance of Christian resignation: the theology of the poem is one that counsels forbearance in the present and promises a recompense for suffering in the hereafter.

The black boy internalizes his mother’s lesson and applies it in his relations with the outer world; specifically, Blake shows us what happens when the boy applies it to his relationship with a white child. The results are ambivalent. The boy explains to his white friend that they are equals, but that neither will be truly free until they are released from the constraints of the physical world. He imagines himself shading his friend from the brightness of God’s love until he can become accustomed to it. This statement implies that the black boy is better prepared for heaven than the white boy, perhaps because of the greater burden of his dark skin has posed during earthly life. This is part of the consoling vision with which his mother has prepared him, which allows his suffering to become a source of pride rather than shame. But the boy’s outlook, and his deference to the white boy, may strike the reader (who has not his innocence) as containing a naive blindness to the realities of oppression and racism, and a too-passive acceptance of suffering and injustice. We do not witness the response of the white boy; Blake’s focus in this poem is on the mental state of the black child. But the question remains of whether the child’s outlook is servile and self-demeaning, or exemplifies Christian charity. The poem itself implies that these might amount to the same thing. “The Nurse’s Song”

The scene of the poem features a group of children playing outside in the hills, while their nurse listens to them in contentment. As twilight begins to fall, she gently urges them to “leave off play” and retire to the house for the night. They ask to play on till bedtime, for as long as the light lasts. The nurse yields to their pleas, and the children shout and laugh with joy while the hills echo their gladness.

Form

The poem has four quatrains, rhymed ABCB and containing an internal rhyme in the third line of each verse.

Commentary

This is a poem of affinities and correspondences. There is no suggestion of alienation, either between children and adults or between man and nature, and even the dark certainty of nightfall is tempered by the promise of resuming play in the morning. The theme of the poem is the children’s innocent and simple joy. Their happiness persists unabashed and uninhibited, and without shame the children plead for permission to continue in it. The sounds and games of the children harmonize with a busy world of sheep and birds. They think of themselves as part of nature, and cannot bear the thought of abandoning their play while birds and sheep still frolic in the sky and on the hills, for the children share the innocence and unselfconscious spontaneity of these natural creatures. They also approach the world with a cheerful optimism, focusing not on the impending nightfall but on the last drops of daylight that surely can be eked out of the evening.

A similar innocence characterizes the pleasure the adult nurse takes in watching her charges play. Their happiness inspires in her a feeling of peace, and their desire to prolong their own delight is one she readily indulges. She is a kind of angelic, guardian presence who, while standing apart from the children, supports rather than overshadows their innocence. As an adult, she is identified with “everything else” in nature; but while her inner repose does contrast with the children’s exuberant delight, the difference does not constitute an antagonism. Rather, her tranquility resonates with the evening’s natural stillness, and both seem to envelop the carefree children in a tender protection. “The Tyger”

The poem begins with the speaker asking a fearsome tiger what kind of divine being could have created it: “What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame they fearful symmetry?” Each subsequent stanza contains further questions, all of which refine this first one. From what part of the cosmos could the tiger’s fiery eyes have come, and who would have dared to handle that fire? What sort of physical presence, and what kind of dark craftsmanship, would have been required to “twist the sinews” of the tiger’s heart? The speaker wonders how, once that horrible heart “began to beat,” its creator would have had the courage to continue the job. Comparing the creator to a blacksmith, he ponders about the anvil and the furnace that the project would have required and the smith who could have wielded them. And when the job was done, the speaker wonders, how would the creator have felt? “Did he smile his work to see?” Could this possibly be the same being who made the lamb?

Form

The poem is comprised of six quatrains in rhymed couplets. The meter is regular and rhythmic, its hammering beat suggestive of the smithy that is the poem’s central image. The simplicity and neat proportions of the poems form perfectly suit its regular structure, in which a string of questions all contribute to the articulation of a single, central idea.

Commentary

The opening question enacts what will be the single dramatic gesture of the poem, and each subsequent stanza elaborates on this conception. Blake is building on the conventional idea that nature, like a work of art, must in some way contain a reflection of its creator. The tiger is strikingly beautiful yet also horrific in its capacity for violence. What kind of a God, then, could or would design such a terrifying beast as the tiger? In more general terms, what does the undeniable existence of evil and violence in the world tell us about the nature of God, and what does it mean to live in a world where a being can at once contain both beauty and horror?

The tiger initially appears as a strikingly sensuous image. However, as the poem progresses, it takes on a symbolic character, and comes to embody the spiritual and moral problem the poem explores: perfectly beautiful and yet perfectly destructive, Blake’s tiger becomes the symbolic center for an investigation into the presence of evil in the world. Since the tiger’s remarkable nature exists both in physical and moral terms, the speaker’s questions about its origin must also encompass both physical and moral dimensions. The poem’s series of questions repeatedly ask what sort of physical creative capacity the “fearful symmetry” of the tiger bespeaks; assumedly only a very strong and powerful being could be capable of such a creation.

The smithy represents a traditional image of artistic creation; here Blake applies it to the divine creation of the natural world. The “forging” of the tiger suggests a very physical, laborious, and deliberate kind of making; it emphasizes the awesome physical presence of the tiger and precludes the idea that such a creation could have been in any way accidentally or haphazardly produced. It also continues from the first description of the tiger the imagery of fire with its simultaneous connotations of creation, purification, and destruction. The speaker stands in awe of the tiger as a sheer physical and aesthetic achievement, even as he recoils in horror from the moral implications of such a creation; for the poem addresses not only the question of whocould make such a creature as the tiger, but who would perform this act. This is a question of creative responsibility and of will, and the poet carefully includes this moral question with the consideration of physical power. Note, in the third stanza, the parallelism of “shoulder” and “art,” as well as the fact that it is not just the body but also the “heart” of the tiger that is being forged. The repeated use of word the “dare” to replace the “could” of the first stanza introduces a dimension of aspiration and willfulness into the sheer might of the creative act.

The reference to the lamb in the penultimate stanza reminds the reader that a tiger and a lamb have been created by the same God, and raises questions about the implications of this. It also invites a contrast between the perspectives of “experience” and “innocence” represented here and in the poem “The Lamb.” “The Tyger” consists entirely of unanswered questions, and the poet leaves us to awe at the complexity of creation, the sheer magnitude of God’s power, and the inscrutability of divine will. The perspective of experience in this poem involves a sophisticated acknowledgment of what is unexplainable in the universe, presenting evil as the prime example of something that cannot be denied, but will not withstand facile explanation, either. The open awe of “The Tyger” contrasts with the easy confidence, in “The Lamb,” of a child’s innocent faith in a benevolent universe. “London”

The speaker wanders through the streets of London and comments on his observations. He sees despair in the faces of the people he meets and hears fear and repression in their voices. The woeful cry of the chimney-sweeper stands as a chastisement to the Church, and the blood of a soldier stains the outer walls of the monarch’s residence. The nighttime holds nothing more promising: the cursing of prostitutes corrupts the newborn infant and sullies the “Marriage hearse.”

Form

The poem has four quatrains, with alternate lines rhyming. Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the poem, and it serves to emphasize the prevalence of the horrors the speaker describes.

Commentary

The opening image of wandering, the focus on sound, and the images of stains in this poem’s first lines recall the Introduction to Songs of Innocence, but with a twist; we are now quite far from the piping, pastoral bard of the earlier poem: we are in the city. The poem’s title denotes a specific geographic space, not the archetypal locales in which many of the other Songs are set. Everything in this urban space—even the natural River Thames —submits to being “charter’d,” a term which combines mapping and legalism. Blake’s repetition of this word (which he then tops with two repetitions of “mark” in the next two lines) reinforces the sense of stricture the speaker feels upon entering the city. It is as if language itself, the poet’s medium, experiences a hemming-in, a restriction of resources. Blake’s repetition, thudding and oppressive, reflects the suffocating atmosphere of the city. But words also undergo transformation within this repetition: thus “mark,” between the third and fourth lines, changes from a verb to a pair of nouns—from an act of observation which leaves some room for imaginative elaboration, to an indelible imprint, branding the people’s bodies regardless of the speaker’s actions.

Ironically, the speaker’s “meeting” with these marks represents the experience closest to a human encounter that the poem will offer the speaker. All the speaker’s subjects—men, infants, chimney-sweeper, soldier, harlot—are known only through the traces they leave behind: the ubiquitous cries, the blood on the palace walls. Signs of human suffering abound, but a complete human form—the human form that Blake has used repeatedly in the Songs to personify and render natural phenomena—is lacking. In the third stanza the cry of the chimney-sweep and the sigh of the soldier metamorphose (almost mystically) into soot on church walls and blood on palace walls—but we never see the chimney- sweep or the soldier themselves. Likewise, institutions of power—the clergy, the government—are rendered by synecdoche, by mention of the places in which they reside. Indeed, it is crucial to Blake’s commentary that neither the city’s victims nor their oppressors ever appear in body: Blake does not simply blame a set of institutions or a system of enslavement for the city’s woes; rather, the victims help to make their own “mind-forg’d manacles,” more powerful than material chains could ever be.

The poem climaxes at the moment when the cycle of misery recommences, in the form of a new human being starting life: a baby is born into poverty, to a cursing, prostitute mother. Sexual and marital union—the place of possible regeneration and rebirth—are tainted by the blight of venereal disease. Thus Blake’s final image is the “Marriage hearse,” a vehicle in which love and desire combine with death and destruction. The Poems of William Blake Study Guide

William Blake was a poet who was not very well recognized during his lifetime. It was not until his sixties when his work began to receive credit as leading a new literary movement in England at the time that was really triggered by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge who were both much younger than Blake and of a superior social class. In his younger years, William Blake's poetry was written off as lunacy by most of his contemporaries, and although he is recognized now as the 'grandfather' or the Romantic period, he was in fact much older and far removed from that time.

That being said, the reason Blake is associated with Romanticism is because of his ardent support of the French Revolution and all forms of anti-establishment radicalism. Blake was an untiring rebel who verbally and poetically fought hard against all constrictions of his time--religious, social, sexual, and literary. His poems transmute clearly all the burring issues and events of his day and touch on issues such as the American War for Independence, the French Revolution, Colonialism and the expansion of Empire, Slavery, and finally the Industrial Revolution. Through Blake's work, the reader can deduce his passion and vision that social rebellion against these injustices would serve as an apocalyptic turning point in the history of humankind, destroying the old, decaying order of oppression and presaging the redemption of humanity.

The poems of William Blake reinterpret the spiritual history of the human race from the fall from Eden to the beginning of the French Revolution. Blake believed in the correspondence between the physical world and the spiritual world and used poetic metaphor to express these beliefs. In his poetry, we hear a man who look's for mankind to salvage his redemption from oppression through resurgence of imaginative life. The power of repression is a constant theme in Blake's poems and he articulates his belief in the titanic forces of revolt and the struggle for freedom against the guardians of tradition.

What is important to keep in mind when discussing or reading Blake's poetry is that a lot of his poems were accompanied with some sort of illustration, painting, or in the case of the prophecies and songs, copper plates. It is difficult to fully grasp the poet’s intentions without having access to the artwork married to the poem.

Additionally, his earliest work, "Poetical Sketches," which is a collection that a lot of the poems discussed here are taken from, shows dissatisfaction with the reigning poetic tradition and his restless quest for new literary forms and techniques. Eventually, Blake's genius would blossom and his thinking began to be articulated in giant forms, leading to the creation of complete mythology and extremely symbolic epics. William Blake 1757–1827 http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/

In his Life of William Blake(1863) Alexander Gilchrist warned his readers that Blake "neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for work'y-day men at all, rather for children and angels; himself 'a divine child,' whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth." Yet Blake himself believed that his writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a majority of men. Far from being an isolated mystic, Blake lived and worked in the teeming metropolis of London at a time of great social and political change that profoundly influenced his writing. After the peace established in 1762, the British Empire seemed secure, but the storm wave begun with the American Revolution in 1775 and the French Revolution in 1789 changed forever the way men looked at their relationship to the state and to the established church. Poet, painter, and engraver, Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men.

One may wonder how a child born in moderate surroundings would become such an original artist and powerful writer. Unlike many well-known writers of his day, Blake was born into a family of moderate means. His father, James, was a hosier, one who sells stockings, gloves, and haberdashery, and the family lived at 28 Broad Street in London in an unpretentious but "respectable" neighborhood. Blake was born on 28 November 1757. In all, seven children were born to James and Catherine Harmitage Blake, but only five survived infancy. Blake seems to have been closest to his youngest brother, Robert, who died while yet young.

By all accounts Blake had a pleasant and peaceful childhood, made even more pleasant by his skipping any formal schooling. As a young boy he wandered the streets of London and could easily escape to the surrounding countryside. Even at an early age, however, his unique mental powers would prove disquieting. According to Gilchrist, on one ramble he was startled to "see a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars." His parents were not amused at such a story, and only his mother's pleadings prevented him from receiving a beating.

His parents did, however, encourage his artistic talents, and the young Blake was enrolled at the age of ten in Pars' drawing school. The expense of continued formal training in art, however, was a prohibitive one, and the family decided that at the age of fourteen William would be apprenticed to a master engraver. At first his father took him to William Ryland, a highly respected engraver. William, however, resisted the arrangement telling his father, "I do not like the man's face: it looks as if he will live to be hanged!" The grim prophecy was to come true twelve years later. Instead of Ryland the family settled on a lesser-known engraver but a man of considerable talents, James Basire. Basire seems to have been a good master, and Blake was a good student of the craft. Blake was later to be especially grateful to Basire for sending the young student to Westminster Abbey to make drawings of monuments Basire was commissioned to engrave. The vast Gothic dimensions of Westminster and the haunting presence of the tombs of kings affected Blake's romantic sensibilities and were to provide fertile ground for his active imagination.

At the age of twenty-one Blake left Basire's apprenticeship and enrolled for a time in the newly formed Royal Academy. It was as a journeyman engraver, however, that Blake earned his living. Booksellers employed him to engrave illustrations for publications ranging from novels such as Don Quixote to serials such as Ladies' Magazine.

One incident at this time affected Blake deeply. In June of 1780 riots broke out in London incited by the anti-Catholic preaching of Lord George Gordon but also by resistance to continued war against the American colonists. Houses, churches, and prisons were burned by uncontrollable mobs bent on destruction. On one evening, whether by design or by accident, Blake found himself at the front of the mob that burned Newgate prison. These images of violent destruction and unbridled revolution gave Blake powerful material for works such as Europe (1794) and America (1793).

Not all of the young man's interests were confined to art and politics. After one ill-fated romance, Blake met Catherine Boucher, an attractive and compassionate woman who took pity on Blake's tales of being spurned. After a year's courtship the couple were married on 18 August 1782. The parish registry shows that Catherine, like many women of her class, could not sign her own name. Blake soon taught her to read and to write, and under Blake's tutoring she also became an accomplished draftsman, helping him in the execution of his designs.

By all accounts the marriage was a successful one, but no children were born to the Blakes. Catherine also managed the household affairs and was undoubtedly of great help in making ends meet on Blake's always limited income.

Blake's friend John Flaxman introduced Blake to the bluestocking Harriet Mathew, wife of the Rev. Henry Mathew and a celebrated lady of fashion whose drawing room was often a meeting place for artists and musicians. There Blake gained favor by reciting and even singing his early poems. Thanks to the support of Flaxman and Mrs. Mathew, a thin volume of poems was published under the title Poetical Sketches(1783). Many of these poems are imitations of classical models, much like the sketches of models of antiquity the young artist made to learn his trade. Even here, however, one sees signs of Blake's protest against war and the tyranny of kings. David Erdman argues that the ballad "Gwin, King of Norway" is a protest against King George's treatment of the American colonies, a subject Blake treated more extensively inAmerica (1793). Only about fifty copies of Poetical Sketches are known to have been printed. Blake's financial enterprises also did not fare well. In 1784, after his father's death, Blake used part of the money he inherited to set up shop as a printseller with his friend James Parker. The Blakes moved to 27 Broad Street, next door to the family home and close to Blake's brothers. The business did not do well, however, and the Blakes soon moved out.

Of more concern to Blake was the deteriorating health of his favorite brother, Robert. Blake tended to his brother in his illness and according to Gilchrist watched the spirit of his brother escape his body in his death: "At the last solemn moment, the visionary eyes beheld the released spirit ascend heaven ward through the matter-of-fact ceiling, 'clapping its hands for joy.'"

Blake always felt the spirit of Robert lived with him. He even announced that it was Robert who informed him how to illustrate his poems in "illuminated writing." Blake's technique was to produce his text and design on a copper plate with an impervious liquid. The plate was then dipped in acid so that the text and design remained in relief. That plate could be used to print on paper, and the final copy would be then hand colored.

After experimenting with this method in a series of aphorisms entitled There is No Natural Religion and All Religions are One (1788?), Blake designed the series of plates for the poems entitled Songs of Innocence and dated the title page 1789. Blake continued to experiment with the process of illuminated writing and in 1794 combined the early poems with companion poems entitled Songs of Experience. The title page of the combined set announces that the poems show "the two Contrary States of the Human Soul." Clearly Blake meant for the two series of poems to be read together, and Robert Gleckner has pointed out in reading the poems one should always consider the point of view of the speaker of the poem and the context of the situation.

The introductory poems to each series display Blake's dual image of the poet as both a "piper" and a "Bard." As man goes through various stages of innocence and experience in the poems, the poet also is in different stages of innocence and experience. The pleasant lyrical aspect of poetry is shown in the role of the "piper" while the more somber prophetic nature of poetry is displayed by the stern Bard.

In the "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence, Blake presents the poet in the form of a simple shepherd: "Piping down the valleys wild / Piping songs of pleasant glee." The frontispiece displays a young shepherd simply dressed and holding a pipe, and it is clear Blake is establishing a pastoral world. The "piping songs" are poems of pure pleasure.

The songs of pleasure are interrupted by the visionary appearance of an angel who asks for songs of more seriousness:

"Pipe a song about a Lamb!"

So I piped with merry chear.

"Piper, pipe that song again."

So I piped: he wept to hear. The piper is no longer playing his songs for his own enjoyment. Now the piper is in the position of a poet playing at the request of an appreciative audience. The "song about a Lamb" suggests a poem about the "Lamb of God," Christ.

The child commands that the poet not keep the songs for himself but share them with his audience:

"Piper sit thee down and write

In a book that all may read."

So he vanish'd from my sight

And I pluck'd a hollow reed.

The "book" is Songs of Innocence, which is designed in a form that "all may read." The simple piper is now a true poet. He no longer writes only for his own enjoyment but for the delight of his audience. The piper is inspired by the directions of the child, and the poet is inspired by his vision of his audience. The child vanishes as the author interiorizes his vision of his audience and makes it a central part of his work. Immediately after the child's disappearance, the author begins the actual physical composition of the poem by plucking the hollow reed for his poem. At the end of the poem the poet is no longer the simple shepherd of Arcadia playing for his own amusement. Now he writes his poems for "Every child" of England.

The "Introduction" to Songs of Experience is a companion to the earlier poem, and, as a poem written in the state of experience, it presents a different view of the nature of the poet and his relation to his audience.

The strident tone of the first stanza provides a marked contrast to the gentle piping of the first poem and reminds us that we are now in the state of experience:

Hear the voice of the Bard!

Who Present, Past and Future sees:

Whose ears have heard

The Holy Word

That walk'd among the ancient trees.

This is not an invocation, but a direct command to the reader to sit up and pay attention. Instead of playing at the request of his audience, the poet now demands that his reader listen to him. The speaker now has authority because of what he has heard. The voice of the poet is that of the ancient Bard and that also of the biblical prophet who has heard the "Holy Word," the word of God. Assuming the role of the prophet and the Bard gives the modern poet a sense of biblical authority to speak on matters sacred and profane. With his authority, the Bard is more willing to instruct his audience than is the piper. The Bard repeats the call of the Holy Word to fallen man. The message repeated by the Bard is that man still "might control" the world of nature and bring back the "fallen light" of vision.

Blake presents two sides of his view of the poet in these introductory poems. Neither one should be dismissed in favor of the other. The poet is both a pleasant piper playing at the request of his audience and a stern Bard lecturing an entire nation. In part this is Blake's interpretation of the ancient dictum that poetry should both delight and instruct. More important, for Blake the poet is a man who speaks both from the personal experience of his own vision and from the "inherited" tradition of ancient Bards and prophets who carried the Holy Word to the nations.

In reading any of the poems, one has to be aware of the mental "state" of the speaker of the poems. In some cases the speakers address the same issue, but from entirely different perspectives. The child of "The Chimney Sweeper" in Songs of Innocencelives in deplorable conditions and is clearly exploited by those around him: "So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep." Yet in his childish state he explains away his misery with a dream of a promised afterlife where God will be his father and he will "never want joy." The same issue of child exploitation is addressed in "The Chimney Sweeper" of Songs of Experience. The speaker is also a child, but one who understands the social forces that have reduced him to misery:

"And because I am happy, & dance & sing

They think they have done me no injury.

And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King.

Who make up a heaven of our misery."

In each poem the reader can see what the speaker can not always see because of his unique perspective: religion and government share a responsibility in the persecution of children.

The famous companion poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" are also written on the same subject: man's conception of God. Yet, how man understands God depends on man's view of God's divinity. In "The Lamb" the speaker makes the traditional association between a lamb and the "Lamb of God," Christ:

For he calls himself a Lamb:

He is meek & he is mild;

He became a little child:

I a child & thou a lamb. The speaker sees God in terms he can understand. God is gentle and kind and very much like us. The close association between the "I," "child," and "lamb" suggests that all men share in the same spiritual brotherhood.

The speaker in "The Tyger" also sees God in terms he can understand, but he sees him from a different perspective. The raging violence of the animal forces him to ask what kind of God could create such terror:

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

The answer, of course, is never given, but again the reader should be able to perceive more than the speaker of the poem. God did make both the lamb and the tyger, and his nature contains both the gentleness of the lamb and the violence of the tyger. Neither perspective is true by itself; both have to be understood.

The two states of innocence and experience are not always clearly separate in the poems, and one can see signs of both states in many poems. The companion poems titled "Holy Thursday" are on the same subject, the forced marching of poor children to St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The speaker in the state of innocence approves warmly of the progression of children:

'Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean

The children walking two & two in red & blue & green

Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow

Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow[.]

The brutal irony is that in this world of truly "innocent" children there are evil men who repress the children, round them up like so many herd of cattle, and force them to show their piety. In this state of innocence, experience is very much present.

The speaker of the companion "Holy Thursday" presents an entirely different perspective:

Is this a holy thing to see,

In a rich and fruitful land,

Babes reduc'd to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand?

The speaker of experience understands that the children have been brutalized and places the blame for this condition not just on the "Grey headed beadles" who have direct responsibility for the children but on the country at large. In a "rich and fruitful land" like England, it is appalling that children are allowed to suffer:

For where-e'er the sun does shine,

And where-e'er the rain does fall:

Babe can never hunger there,

Nor poverty the mind appall[.]

If experience has a way of creeping into the world of innocence, innocence also has a way of creeping into experience. The golden land where the "sun does shine" and the "rain does fall" is a land of bountiful goodness and innocence. But even here in this blessed land, there are children starving. The sharp contrast between the two conditions makes the social commentary all the more striking and supplies the energy of the poem.

The contrast between innocence and experience is also apparent in another illuminated book produced in 1789, The Book of Thel. Thel is a maiden who laments the passing of youth and of innocence: "O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water, / Why fade these children of the spring, born but to smile & fall?" Thel questions elements of nature, like the Lilly of the Valley and the Cloud, that are beautiful but transitory. Yet each understands that the transitory nature of beauty is necessary. The Cloud answers Thel's complaint by saying that "Every thing that lives / Lives not alone nor for itself." Thel is innocent but when one is stuck in a state of innocence there can be no growth.

Thel is allowed to enter into the world of experience, and she is startled by a voice from her own grave:

"Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy?

Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?"

The Virgin is shocked by this peek into her own sexuality and mortality and runs back to the quiet vales of Har "with a shriek." Blake satirizes those who are unable to see the necessary connection between innocence and experience, the spiritual world and the physical world. Thel's world of soft watercolors is not enough. She cannot understand that even the lowly worm is loved by God and serves his part in creating life.

The storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789 and the agonies of the French Revolution sent shock waves through England. Some hoped for a corresponding outbreak of liberty in England while others feared a breakdown of the social order. In much of his writing Blake argues against the monarchy. In his early Tiriel (written circa 1789) Blake traces the fall of a tyrannical king. Politics was surely often the topic of conversation at the publisher Joseph Johnson's house, where Blake was often invited. There Blake met important literary and political figures such as William Godwin, Joseph Priestly, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Paine. According to one legend Blake is even said to have saved Paine's life by warning him of his impending arrest. Whether or not that is true, it is clear that Blake was familiar with some of the leading radical thinkers of his day.

In The French Revolution Blake celebrates the rise of democracy in France and the fall of the monarchy. King Louis represents a monarchy that is old and dying. The sick king is lethargic and unable to act: "From my window I see the old mountains of France, like aged men, fading away." The "old mountains" of monarchy are doomed to collapse under the pressure of the people and their representatives in the assembly. The "voice of the people" demands the removal of the king's troops from Paris, and their departure at the end of the first book signals the triumph of democracy.

On the title page for book one of The French Revolution Blake announces that it is "A Poem in Seven Books," but none of the other books has been found. The "Advertisement" to the poem promises "The remaining Books of the Poem are finished, and will be published in their Order." The first book was set in type in 1791, but exists only in proof copies. Johnson never published the poem, perhaps because of fear of prosecution, or perhaps because Blake himself withdrew it from publication. Johnson did have cause to be nervous. Erdman points out that in the same year booksellers were thrown in jail for selling the works of Thomas Paine.

In America (1793) Blake also addresses the idea of revolution, but the poem is less a commentary on the actual revolution in America as it is a commentary on universal principles that are at work in any revolution. The fiery figure of Orc represents all revolutions:

The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands,

What night he led the starry hosts thro' the wide wilderness,

That stony law I stamp to dust; and scatter religion abroad

To the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves.

The same force that causes the colonists to rebel against King George is the force that overthrows the perverted rules and restrictions of established religions.

The revolution in America suggests to Blake a similar revolution in England. In the poem the king, like the ancient pharaohs of Egypt, sends pestilence to America to punish the rebels, but the colonists are able to redirect the forces of destruction to England. Erdman suggests that Blake is thinking of the riots in England during the war and the chaotic condition of the English troops, many of whom deserted. Writing this poem in the 1790s, Blake also surely imagined the possible effect of the French Revolution on England.

Another product of the radical 1790s is The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Written and etched between 1790 and 1793, Blake's poem brutally satirizes oppressive authority in church and state. The poem also satirizes the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish philosopher whose ideas once attracted Blake's interests.

The powerful opening of the poem suggests a world of violence: "Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden'd air / Hungry clouds swag on the deep." The fire and smoke suggest a battlefield and the chaos of revolution. The cause of that chaos is analyzed at the beginning of the poem. The world has been turned upside down. The "just man" has been turned away from the institutions of church and state, and in his place are fools and hypocrites who preach law and order but create chaos. Those who proclaim restrictive moral rules and oppressive laws as "goodness" are in themselves evil. Hence to counteract this repression, Blake announces that he is of the "Devil's Party" that will advocate freedom and energy and gratified desire.

The "Proverbs of Hell" are clearly designed to shock the reader out of his commonplace notion of what is good and what is evil:

Prisons are built with stones of Law,

Brothels with bricks of Religion.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

It is the oppressive nature of church and state that has created the repulsive prisons and brothels. Sexual energy is not an inherent "evil," but the repression of that energy is. The preachers of morality fail to understand that God is in all things, including the sexual nature of men and women.

Blake is, of course, not advocating moral and political anarchy, but a proper balance of energy and its opposing force, reason. Reason is defined as "the bound or outward circumference of Energy." Reason is a vital and necessary force to define Energy, and "Without Contraries is no progression." The problem now is that the forces of reason have predominated, and the forces of energy must be let loose.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell contains many of the basic religious ideas developed in the major prophecies. Blake analyzes the development of organized religion as a perversion of ancient visions: "The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & Numerous senses could perceive." Ancient man created those gods to express his vision of the spiritual properties that he perceived in the physical world. So far, so good, but the gods began to take on a life of their own separate from man: "Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood." The "system" or organized religion keeps man from perceiving the spiritual in the physical. The gods are seen as separate from man, and an elite race of priests is developed to approach the gods: "Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast." Instead of looking for God on remote altars, Blake warns, man should look within.

In August of 1790 Blake moved from his house on Poland Street across the Thames to the area known as Lambeth. The Blakes lived in the house for ten years, and the surrounding neighborhood often becomes mythologized in his poetry. Felpham was a "lovely vale," a place of trees and open meadows, but it also contained signs of human cruelty, such as the house for orphans. At his home Blake kept busy not only with his illuminated poetry but also with the daily chore of making money. During the 1790s Blake earned fame as an engraver and was glad to receive numerous commissions.

One story told by Blake's friend Thomas Butts shows how much the Blakes enjoyed the pastoral surroundings of Lambeth. At the end of Blake's garden was a small summer house, and coming to call on the Blakes one day Butts was shocked to find the couple stark naked: "Come in!" cried Blake; "it's only Adam and Eve you know!" The Blakes were reciting passages from Paradise Lost, apparently "in character."

Sexual freedom is addressed in Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), also written during the Lambeth period. Oothoon, the "soft soul of America," expresses her unrestricted love for Theotormon who cannot accept such love because he is limited by jealousy and possessiveness. In the poem Oothoon is raped by Bromion, and the enraged Theotormon binds the two together. The frontispiece to the book shows Bromion and Oothoon back-to- back with their arms bound together while Theotormon, hunched over, stares at the ground. The relationship between Bromion and Oothoon is like that of marriage that is held together only by laws and not by love. In her lament to Theotormon, Oothoon denounces the destruction of a woman's sexual desire:

Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot, is bound

In spells of law to one she loathes? and must she drag the chain

Of life in weary lust?

The marriage "spells of law" bind a woman to man much like a slave is bound to a master, and marriage can become, in Mary Wollstonecraft's phrase, a form of "legalized prostitution."

Oothoon calls for the freedom of desire: "Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears" and even promises to provide women for Theotormon to enjoy "in lovely copulation," but Theotormon, bound by law and custom, cannot accept such love.

In 1793-1795 Blake produced a remarkable collection of illuminated works that have come to be known as the "Minor Prophecies." In Europe (1794), The First Book of Urizen (1794), The Book of Los (1795), The Song of Los (1795), and The Book of Ahania (1795) Blake develops the major outlines of his universal mythology. In these poems Blake examines the fall of man. In Blake's mythology man and God were once united, but man separated himself from God and became weaker and weaker as he became further divided. Throughout the poems Blake writes of the destructive aspects of this separation into warring identities. The narrative of the universal mythology is interwoven with the historical events of Blake's own time. The execution of King Louis XVI in 1793 led to an inevitable reaction, and England soon declared war on France. England's participation in the war against France and its attempt to quell the revolutionary spirit is addressed in Europe. In Blake's poem liberty is repressed in England after it declares war on France:

Over the windows Thou shalt not; & over the chimneys

Fear is written

With bands of iron round their necks fasten'd into the walls of citizens

The very force of that repression, however, will cause its opposite to appear in the revolutionary figure of Orc: "And in the vineyards of reds France appear'd the light of his fury." Orc promises fire and destruction, but he also wars against the forces of repression.

Blake's minor prophecies are, of course, much more than political commentaries. In these poems Blake analyzes the universal forces at work when repression and revolution clash. Erdman has pointed out the historical parallel in Europe between Rintrah and William Pitt, the English Prime Minister who led his country into war against France. Yet in the same poem we see references to repression from the time of Christ to the Last Judgement. Blake saw English repression of the French Revolution as but one moment in the stream of history.

The causes of that repression are examined in The First Book of Urizen. The wordUrizen suggests "your reason" and also "horizon." He represents that part of the mind that constantly defines and limits human thought and action. In the frontispiece to the poem he is pictured as an aged man hunched over a massive book writing with both hands in other books. Behind him stand the tablets of the ten commandments, and Urizen is surely writing other "thou shalt nots" for others to follow. His twisted anatomical position shows the perversity of what should be the "human form divine."

The poem traces the birth of Urizen as a separate part of the human mind. He broods upon himself and comes to insist on laws for all to follow:

"One command, one joy, one desire

One curse, one weight, one measure,

One King, one God, one Law."

Urizen's repressive laws bring only further chaos and destruction. Like Milton's hell, Urizen's world is filled with the contradictions of darkness and fire: "no light from the fires." The lawgiver can only produce destruction, not understanding. Appalled by the chaos he himself created, Urizen fashions a world apart. The process of separation continues as the character of Los is divided from Urizen. Los, the "Eternal Prophet," represents another power of the human mind. Los forges the creative aspects of the mind into works of art. Like Urizen he is a limiter, but the limitations he creates are productive and necessary. In the poem Los forms "nets and gins" to bring an end to Urizen's continual chaotic separation.

Los is horrified by the figure of the bound Urizen and is separated by his pity, "for Pity divides the Soul." Los undergoes a separation into a male and female form. His female form is called Enitharmon, and her creation is viewed with horror:

Eternity shudder'd when they saw

Man begetting his likeness

On his own divided image.

This separation into separate sexual identities is yet another sign of man's fall. The "Eternals" contain both male and female forms within themselves, but man is divided and weak.

Enitharmon gives birth to the fiery Orc, whose violent birth gives some hope for radical change in a fallen world, but Orc is bound in chains by Los, now a victim of jealousy. Enitharmon bears an "enormous race," but it is a race of men and women who are weak and divided and who have lost sight of eternity.

Urizen explores the fallen world, spreading his "Net of Religion" over the cities of men:

And their children wept, & built

Tombs in the desolate places,

And form'd laws of prudence, and call'd them

The eternal laws of God.

In his fallen state man has limited senses and fails to perceive the infinite. Divided from God and caught by the narrow traps of religion, he sees God only as a crude lawgiver who must be obeyed.

The Book of Los also examines man's fall and the binding of Urizen, but from the perspective of Los whose task it is to place a limit on the chaotic separation begun by Urizen. The decayed world is again one of ignorance where there is "no light from the fires." From this chaos the bare outlines of the human form begin to appear:

Many ages of groans, till there grew Branchy forms organizing the Human

Into finite inflexible organs.

The human senses are pale imitations of the true senses that allow one to perceive eternity. Urizen's world where man now lives is spoken of as an "illusion" because it masks the spiritual world that is everywhere present.

In The Song of Los, Los sings of the decayed state of man, where the arbitrary laws of Urizen have become institutionalized:

Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave

Laws & Religions to the sons of Har, binding them more

And more to Earth, closing and restraining,

Till a Philosophy of five Senses was complete.

Urizen wept & gave it into the hands of Newton & Locke.

The "philosophy of the five senses" espoused by scientists and philosophers argues that the world and the mind are like industrial machines operating by fixed laws but devoid of imagination, creativity, or any spiritual life. Blake condemns this materialistic view of the world espoused in the writings of Newton and Locke.

Although man is in a fallen state, the end of the poem points to the regeneration that is to come:

Orc, raging in European darkness,

Arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps,

Like a serpent of fiery flame!

The coming of Orc is likened not only to the fires of revolution sweeping Europe, but also to the final apocalypse when the "Grave shrieks with delight."

The separation of man is also examined in The Book of Ahania, which Blake later incorporated in Vala, or The Four Zoas. In The Book of Ahania Urizen is further divided into male and female forms. Urizen is repulsed by his feminine shadow that is called Ahania:

He groan'd anguish'd, & called her Sin,

Kissing her and weeping over her; Then hid her in darkness, in silence,

Jealous, tho' she was invisible.

Blake satirizes the biblical and Miltonic associations of sin and lust. "Ahania" in Blake's poem is only a "sin" in that she is given that name. Urizen, the lawgiver, can not accept the liberating aspects of sexual pleasure. At the end of the poem, Ahania laments the lost pleasures of eternity:

"Where is my golden palace?

Where my ivory bed?

Where the joy of my morning hour?

Where the sons of eternity singing."

The physical pleasures of sexual union are celebrated as an entrance to a spiritual state. The physical union of man and woman is sign of the spiritual union that is to come.

At the same time as he was writing these individual poems that center on aspects of man's fall, Blake was also composing an epic poem on the fall of man into separate identities. Blake originally called the poem Vala and later changed the name to The Four Zoas. He worked on the poem for a number of years but never completed it. It survives in manuscript form with rough designs for illustrations, but it never became one of the "illuminated books."

The Four Zoas is subtitled "The Torments of Love and Jealousy in the Death and Judgement of Albion the Ancient Man," and the poem develops Blake's myth of Albion, who represents both the country of England and the unification of all men. Albion is composed of "Four Mighty Ones": Tharmas, Urthona, Urizen, and Luvah. Originally, in "Eden," these four exist in the unity of "The Universal Brotherhood." At this early time all parts of man lived in perfect harmony, but now they are fallen into warring camps. The poem traces the changes in Albion:

His fall into Division & his Resurrection to Unity:

His fall into the Generation of decay & death, & his

Regeneration by the Resurrection from the dead.

The poem begins with Tharmas and examines the fall of each aspect of man's identity. The poem progresses from disunity toward unity as each Zoa moves toward final unification.

In the apocalyptic "Night the Ninth," the evils of oppression are overturned in the turmoil of the Last Judgment:

The thrones of Kings are shaken, they have lost their robes & crowns

The poor smite their oppressors, they awake up to the harvest.

The final overthrow of all kings and tyrants that earthly revolutions tried but failed to achieve will be accomplished on the last day. The "harvest" imagery is from the Book of Revelations and represents the process of gathering and discarding that marks the progress of man's soul on the last day.

As dead men are rejuvenated, Christ, the "Lamb of God," is brought back to life and sheds the evils of institutionalized religions:

Thus shall the male & female live the life of Eternity,

Because the Lamb of God Creates himself a bride & wife

That we his Children evermore may live in Jerusalem

Which now descendeth out of heaven, a City, yet a Woman

Mother of myriads redeem'd & born in her spiritual palaces,

By a New Spiritual birth Regenerated from Death.

The heavenly City of Jerusalem is the true form of God's church. The earthly city of Jerusalem and the numerous forms of religions are but pale imitations of that true religion where God and the church are joined. In that City man's separate identities are reunited, and man is reunited with God.

Very little of Blake's poetry of the 1790s was known to the general public. His reputation as an artist was mixed. Response to his art ranged from praise to derision, but he did gain some fame as an engraver. He received several commissions, the most important probably being his illustrations to Edward Young's Night Thoughts. In 1795 the publisher and bookseller Richard Edwards commissioned Blake to illustrate the then-famous poems of Young. Blake produced 537 watercolor designs of which 43 were selected for engraving. The first volume of a projected four-volume series was published in 1797. However, the project did not prove financially successful, and no further volumes were published. After the disappointment of that project, Blake's friend and admirer Flaxman commissioned Blake to illustrate the poems of Thomas Gray. Blake painted 116 watercolors and completed the project in 1798. Blake was also aided by his friend Thomas Butts, who commissioned a series of biblical paintings. His commissions did not produce much in the way of income, but Blake never seems to have been discouraged. In 1799 Blake wrote to George Cumberland, "I laugh at Fortune & Go on & on."

Because of his monetary woes, Blake often had to depend on the benevolence of patrons of the arts. This sometimes led to heated exchanges between the independent artist and the wealthy patron. Dr. John Trusler was one such patron whom Blake failed to please. Dr. Trusler was something of a dabbler in a variety of fields. Aside from being a clergyman, he was a student of medicine, a bookseller, and the author of such works as Hogarth Moralized (1768), The Way to be Rich and Respectable(1750?), and A Sure Way to Lengthen Life with Vigor (circa 1819). Blake's friend Cumberland had recommended Blake to Trusler in hopes of providing some needed income for Blake. Blake, however, found himself unable to follow the clergyman's wishes: "I attempted every morning for a fortnight together to follow your Dictate, but when I found my attempts were in vain, resolv'd to shew an independence which I know will please an Author better than slavishly following the track of another, however admirable that track may be. At any rate, my Excuse must be: I could not do otherwise; it was out of my power!" Dr. Trusler was not convinced and replied that he found Blake's "Fancy" to be located in the "World of Spirits" and not in this world.

Blake's rebuttal is a classic defense of his own principles. To the charge that Blake needed someone to "elucidate" his idea, Blake replied with characteristic wrath: "That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care. The wisest of the Ancients consider'd what is not too Explicit as the fittest for Instruction, because it rouzes the faculities to act." Blake relies on a basic principle of rhetoric that is evident in his writing: it is often best to leave some things unsaid so that the reader must employ his imagination. To the charge that his visions were not of this world, Blake replied that he had seen his visions in this world, but not all men see alike: "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." The problem then is not the location of Blake's subjects, but the relative ability of man to perceive. If Dr. Trusler could not understand Blake's drawings, the problem was his inability to see with the imagination.

Dr. Trusler was not the only patron that tried to make Blake conform to popular tastes. Blake's stormy relation to his erstwhile friend and patron William Hayley directly affected the writing of the epics Milton and Jerusalem. When Blake met him Hayley was a well- known man of letters who had produced several popular volumes of poetry. His Triumphs of Temper (1781), which admonishes women to control their tempers in order to be good wives, was very popular. In 1800 under Hayley's promptings Blake moved from London to the village of Felpham, where Hayley lived. It was expected that Blake would receive numerous engraving commissions, and his financial problems would disappear.

Hayley did provide Blake with some small commissions. Blake began work on a series of eighteen "Heads of the Poets" for Hayley's library and worked on the engravings for Hayley's Life of Cowper (1802). Hayley also set Blake to work on a series of small portraits, but Blake soon bristled under the watchful eye of his patron. In January of 1803 Blake wrote to Butts that "I find on all hands great objections to my doing anything but the meer drudgery of business, & intimations that if I do not confine myself to this, I shall not live; this has always pursu'd me." In the same letter Blake argued that his duty to his art must take precedence to the necessity of making money: "But if we fear to do the dictates of our Angels, & tremble at the Tasks set before us; if we refuse to do Spiritual Acts because of natural Fears of natural Desires! Who can describe the dismal torments of such a state!"

The "Spiritual Acts" Blake referred to include the writing of his epic poetry despite Hayley's objections. In the same month Blake wrote to his brother James that he is determined "To leave This Place" and that he can no longer accept Hayley's patronage: "The truth is, As a Poet he is frighten'd at me & as a Painter his view & mine are opposite; he thinks to turn me into a Portrait Painter as he did Poor Romney, but this he nor all the devils in hell will never do." Blake left Felpham in 1803 and returned to London. In April of that year he wrote to Butts that he was overjoyed to return to the city: "That I can alone carry on my visionary studies in London unannoy'd, & that I may converse with my friends in Eternity, See Visions, Dream Dreams & Prophecy & Speak Parables unobserv'd & at liberty from the Doubts of other Mortals." In the same letter Blake refers to his epic poem Milton, composed while at Felpham: "But none can know the Spiritual Acts of my three years' Slumber on the banks of the Ocean, unless he has seen them in the Spirit, or unless he should read My long Poem descriptive of those Acts."

In a later letter to Butts, Blake declares his resolution to have Milto printed:

This Poem shall, by Divine Assistance be progressively Printed & Ornamented with Prints & given to the Public. But of this work I take care to say little to Mr H., since he is as much averse to my poetry as he is to a Chapter in the Bible. He knows that I have writ it, for I have shewn it to him, & he has read Part by his own desire & has looked with sufficient contempt to inhance my opinion of it. But I do not wish to irritate by seeming too obstinate in Poetic pursuits. But if all the World should set their faces against This, I have Orders to set my face like flint (Ezekiel iiiC, 9v) against their faces, & my forehead against their foreheads.

Blake's letter reveals much of his attitude toward his patron and toward his readers. Blake believed that his poetry could be read and understood by the general public, but he was determined not to sacrifice his vision in order to become popular. Men of letters such as Hayley would not be allowed to dictate his art. Blake compares himself to the prophet Ezekiel, whom the Lord made strong to warn the Israelites of their wickedness. Blake's images of a stern prophet locked head to head with his adversary is a fitting picture of part of Blake's relation with his reader. Blake knew that his poetry would be derided by some readers. In Milton Blake tells us that "the idiot reasoner laughs at the Man of Imagination," and in the face of that laughter Blake remained resolute.

In his "slumber on the banks of the Ocean," Blake, surrounded by financial worries and hounded by a patron who could not appreciate his art, reflected on the value of visionary poetry. Milton, which Blake started to engrave in 1804 (probably finishing in 1808), is a poem that constantly draws attention to itself as a work of literature. Its ostensible subject is the poet John Milton, but the author, William Blake, also creates a character for himself in his own poem. Blake examines the entire range of mental activity involved in the art of poetry from the initial inspiration of the poet to the reception of his vision by the reader of the poem. Milton examines as part of its subject the very nature of poetry: what it means to be a poet, what a poem is, and what it means to be a reader of poetry.

In the preface to the poem, Blake issues a battle cry to his readers to reject what is merely fashionable in art:

Rouze up, O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War. Painters! on you I call. Sculptors! Architects! suffer not the fashionable Fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works, or the expensive advertizing boasts that they make of such works; believe Christ & his Apostles that there is a Class of men whose whole delight is in Destroying. 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.

In attacking the "ignorant Hirelings" in the "Camp, the Court & the University," Blake repeats a familiar dissenting cry against established figures in English society. Blake's insistence on being "just & true to our own Imaginations" places a special burden on the reader of his poem. For as he makes clear, Blake demands the exercise of the creative imagination from his own readers.

In the well-known lyric that follows, Blake asks for a continuation of Christ's vision in modern-day England:

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green & pleasant Land.

The poet-prophet must lead the reader away from man's fallen state and toward a revitalized state where man can perceive eternity.

"Book the First" contains a poem-within-a-poem, a "Bard's Prophetic Song." The Bard's Song describes man's fall from a state of vision. We see man's fall in the ruined form of Albion as a representative of all men and in the fall of Palamabron from his proper position as prophet to a nation. Interwoven into this narrative are the Bard's addresses to the reader, challenges to the reader's senses, descriptions of contemporary events and locations in England, and references to the life of William Blake. Blake is at pains to show us that his mythology is not something far removed from us but is part of our day to day life. Blake describes the reader's own fall from vision and the possibility of regaining those faculties necessary for vision.

The climax of the Bard's Song is the Bard's sudden vision of the "Holy Lamb of God": "Glory! Glory! to the Holy lamb of God: / I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord." The vision of the "Lamb of God" is traditional in apocalyptic literature. In this case the Bard's final burst of vision is important not only for its content, but also for its placement in the poem. The Bard's sudden vision of the Lamb of God testifies that man need not remain "in chains of the mind Lock'd up." The Bard begins by describing the fall from vision, but he ends with a vision of his own that indicates that man still possesses the powers of vision.

At the end of the Bard's Song, the Bard's power of vision is questioned much as Blake's prophecies were criticized. The Bard's spirit is incorporated into that of the poet Milton. Blake portrays Milton as a great but flawed poet who must unify the separated elements of his own identity before he can reclaim his powers of vision and become a true poet. Upon hearing the Bard's Song, Milton is moved to descend to earth and begin the process of becoming an inspired poet. It is a journey of intense self-discovery and self-examination that requires Milton to cast off "all that is not inspiration." As Milton is presented as a man in the process of becoming a poet, Blake presents himself as a character in the poem undergoing the transformation necessary to become a poet. As Milton is inspired by the "Bard's Song," Blake is inspired by the spirit of Milton:

Then first I saw him in the Zenith as a falling star

Descending perpendicular, swift as the swallow or swift:

And on my left foot falling on the tarsus, enter'd there

But from my left foot a black cloud redounding spread over Europe.

This sudden moment of inspiration extends to the very end of book one. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, the character Blake is not fully aware of the importance of this moment of illumination. Like Milton, Blake is in the process of becoming a poet.

In a moment of sudden inspiration, Blake overcomes his "earthly lineaments" and binds "this Vegetable World" as a sandal under his foot so that he can "walk forward thro' Eternity." Blake's act of creativity enables him to merge with Los:

And I became One Man with him arising in my strength

'Twas too late now to recede. Los had enter'd into my soul:

His terrors now possess'd me whole! I arose in fury & strength!

Blake's act of faith in the world of the imagination enables him to increase his powers of perception and sets a pattern for the reader to follow. Blake's union with Los marks the end of one stage of the unification process that began at the completion of the Bard's Song. In each case faith in the power of the imagination precedes union.

Only Milton believes in the vision of the Bard's Song, and the Bard takes "refuge in Milton's bosom." As Blake realizes the insignificance of this "Vegetable World," Los merges with Blake, and he arises in "fury and strength." This ongoing belief in the hidden powers of the mind heals divisions and increases powers of perception. The Bard, Milton, Los, and Blake begin to merge into a powerful bardic union. Yet it is but one stage in a greater drive toward the unification of all men in a "Universal Brotherhood."

In the second book of Milton Blake initiates the reader into the order of poets and prophets. Blake continues the process begun in book one of taking the reader through different stages in the growth of a poet. Ololon, Milton's female form, descends to earth to unite with Milton. Her descent gives the reader a radically new view of this world. Ololon's unique perspective turns the reader's world of time and space upside down to make him see the decayed and limited nature of this world. If he can learn to see his familiar world from a new perspective, then the reader can develop his own powers of perception. Indeed "learning to see" is the first requirement of the poet. The turning of the outside world upside down is a preliminary stage in an extensive examination of man's internal world. A searching inquiry into the self is a necessary stage in the development of the poet. Milton is told he must first look within: "Judge then of thy Own Self: thy Eternal Lineaments explore, / What is Eternal & what Changeable, & what Annihilable." Milton descends within himself and judges the separate parts of his own identity; he must distinguish between what is permanent and what transitory. Central to the process of judging the self is a confrontation with that destructive part of man's identity Blake calls the Selfhood. The Selfhood continually hinders man's spiritual development. Only by annihilating the Selfhood, Blake believes, can one hope to participate in the visionary experience of the poem. Unless the Selfhood is annihilated, one cannot become a true poet, for the Selfhood continually blocks "the human center of creativity."

The Selfhood places two powerful forces to block our path: the socially accepted values of "love" and "reason." In its purest state love is given freely with no restrictions and no thought of return. In its fallen state love is reduced to a form of trade: "Thy love depends on him thou lovest, & on his dear loves / Depend thy pleasures, which thou hast cut off by jealousy." "Female love" is given only in exchange for love received. It is bartering in human emotions and is not love at all. When Milton denounces his own Selfhood, he gives up "Female love" and loves freely and openly.

As Blake attacks accepted notions of love, he also forces the reader to question the value society places on reason. The Seven Angels of the Presence warn that the "memory is a state Always, & the Reason is a State / Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created." Both Memory and Reason exercise the lesser powers of the mind. Nothing new can be created by the mental processes involved in memory and reason. In his struggle with Urizen, who represents man's limited power of reason, Milton seeks to cast off the deadening effect of the reasoning power and free the mind for the power of the imagination. Milton gains control of Urizen, and it is clear that in Milton's mind it is now the imagination that directs reason.

Destroying the Selfhood allows Milton to unite with others. He descends upon Blake's path and continues the process of uniting with Blake that had begun in book one. This union is also a reflection of Blake's encounter with Los that is described in book one and illustrated in book two. As was the case with seeing Los, Blake is startled by Milton's arrival. Los appears as a "terrible flaming Sun," and Milton's arrival turns Blake's path into a "solid fire, as bright as the Clear Sun." Both events describe the process of union and the assumption of the powers of the imagination necessary to become a true poet. All of this comes about through the individual annihilation of the Selfhood. To become a poet and prophet, the man of imagination must first look within and destroy the Selfhood.

Milton's final speech in praise of the virtue of self-annihilation is followed by Ololon's own annihilation of the Selfhood. She rejects her virgin Selfhood and joins with Milton:

Then as a Moony Ark Ololon descended to Felpham's Vale

In clouds of blood, in streams of gore, with dreadful thunderings

Into the fires of Intellect that rejoic'd in Felpham's Vale

Around the Starry Eight; with one accord the Starry Eight became One Man, Jesus the Savior, wonderful!

As Noah's Ark saved lives upon earth, the "Moony Ark" of Ololon preserves man's individual nature. The Seven Eyes of God that had instructed Milton are now merged with Milton, Blake, and all men on earth. Jesus is "One Man," for he unites all men in a Universal Brotherhood. By destroying the Selfhood, we do not lose our identity but rather gain a new identity in the body of the universal brotherhood. Our entry into this union prepares us for the promise of vision.

The apex of Blake's vision in Felpham is the brief image of the Throne of God. In Revelation, John's vision of the Throne of God is a prelude to the apocalypse itself. Similarly Blake's vision of the throne is also a prelude to the coming apocalypse. Blake's vision is abruptly cut off as the Four Zoas sound the Four Trumpets, signaling the call to judgment of the peoples of the earth. The trumpets bring to a halt Blake's vision, as he falls to the ground and returns to his mortal state. The apocalypse is still to come.

Blake's falling to the ground is not a mystic swoon, but part of his design to take himself out of the poem and leave it to the reader to continue the vision of the coming apocalypse. The author falls before the vision of the Throne of God and the awful sound of the coming apocalypse. However, the vision of the author does not fall with him to the ground. In the very next line after Blake describes his faint, we see his vision soar: "Immediately the lark mounted with a loud trill from Felpham's Vale." We have seen the lark as the messenger of Los and the carrier of inspiration. Its sudden flight here demonstrates that the vision of the poem does not end but continues. It is up to the reader to follow the flight of the lark to the Gate of Los and continue the vision of Milton.

Milton does not come to a firm conclusion, for it can only be concluded by the reader. The reader, armed with the creative power of poetry and the power of his own imagination, is asked to continue the work of the poet and prophet.

Before Blake could leave Felpham and return to London, an incident occurred that was very disturbing to him and possibly even dangerous. Without Blake's knowledge, his gardener had invited a soldier by the name of John Scofield into his garden to help with the work. Blake seeing the soldier and thinking he had no business being there promptly tossed him out. In a letter to Butts, Blake recalled the incident in detail:

I desired him, as politely as possible, to go out of the Garden; he made me an impertinent answer. I insisted on his leaving the Garden; he refused. I still persisted in desiring his departure; he then threaten'd to knock out my Eyes, with many abominable imprecations & with some contempt for my Person; it affronted my foolish Pride. I therefore took him by the Elbows & pushed him before me till I had got him out; there I intended to leave him, but he, turning about, put himself into a Posture of Defiance, threatening & swearing at me. I, perhaps foolishly & perhaps not, stepped out at the Gate, & putting aside his blows, took him again by the Elbows, &, keeping his back to me, pushed him forwards down the road about fifty yards--he all the while endeavouring to turn round & strike me, & raging & cursing, which drew out several neighbours....

What made this almost comic incident so serious was that the soldier swore before a magistrate that Blake had said "Damn the King" and had uttered seditious words. Blake denied the charge, but he was forced to post bail and appear in court. Hayley came to Blake's aid by helping to post the bail money and arranging for counsel. Blake left Felpham at the end of September 1803 and settled in a new residence on South Molton Street in London. His trial was set for the following January at Chichester. Hayley was almost forced to miss the trial because of a fall he suffered while riding his horse, but he was determined to help Blake and appeared in court to testify to the good character of the accused. The soldier's testimony was shown to be false, and the jury acquitted Blake. A local newspaper, the Sussex Weekly Advertiser(16 January 1804), reported on the acquittal: "After a very long and patient hearing, he was by the Jury acquitted, which so gratified the auditory, that the court was, in defiance of all decency, thrown into an uproar by their noisy exultations."

Blake's radical political views made him sometimes fear persecution, and he wondered if Scofield had been a government agent sent to entrap him. In any event Blake forever damned the soldier by attacking him in the epic poem Jerusalem. One positive result of the trial was that Blake was reconciled with Hayley, whose support during the trial was greatly appreciated.

Jerusalem is in many ways Blake's major achievement. It is an epic poem consisting of 100 illuminated plates. Blake dated the title page 1804, but he seems to have worked on the poem for a considerable length of time after that date.

In Jerusalem Blake develops his mythology to explore man's fall and redemption. As the narrative begins, man is apart from God and split into separate identities. As the poem progresses man's split identities are unified, and man is reunited with the divinity that is within him.

In chapter one Blake announces the purpose of his "great task":

To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes

Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity

Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination.

It is sometimes easy to get lost in the complex mythology of Blake's poetry and forget that he is describing not outside events but a "Mental Fight" that takes place in the mind. Much of Jerusalem is devoted to the idea of awakening the human senses, so that the reader can perceive the spiritual world that is everywhere present.

At the beginning of the poem, Jesus addresses the fallen Albion: "'I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; / 'Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me.'" In his fallen state Albion rejects this close union with God and dismisses Jesus as the "Phantom of the overheated brain!" Driven by jealousy Albion hides his emanation, Jerusalem. Separation from God leads to further separation into countless male and female forms creating endless division and dispute.

Blake describes the fallen state of man by describing the present day. Interwoven into the mythology are references to present-day London. There one finds: "Inspiration deny'd, Genius forbidden by laws of punishment." Instead of inspiration man is driven by the "Reasoning Power" which Blake calls "An Abstract objecting power that Negates everything." It is against this mental error that Los wars: "'I must create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's. / 'I will not Reason & Compare : my business is to Create.'" Like the poet Blake, Los emphasizes the importance of the human imagination. Systems of thought, philosophies or religions, when separated from men, destroy what is human. To put an end to the destructive separation, Los struggles to build "The Great City of Golgonooza." Like a work of art, Golgonooza gives form to abstract ideas. It represents the human form and is composed of bodies of men and women.

In chapter two the "disease of Albion" leads to further separation and decay. As the human body is a limited form of its divine origin, the cities of England are limited representations of the Universal Brotherhood of Man. Fortunately for man, there is "a limit of contraction," and the fall must come to an end.

Caught by the errors of sin and vengeance, Albion gives up hope and dies. The flawed religions of moral law cannot save him: "The Visions of Eternity, by reason of narrowed perceptions, / Are become weak Visions of Time & Space, fix'd into furrows of death." Our limited senses make us think of our lives as bounded by time and space apart from eternity. In such a framework physical death marks the end of existence. But there is also a limit to death, and Albion's body is preserved by the Savior. “Holy Thursday”

On Holy Thursday (Ascension Day), the clean-scrubbed charity-school children of London flow like a river toward St. Paul’s Cathedral. Dressed in bright colors they march double- file, supervised by “gray headed beadles.” Seated in the cathedral, the children form a vast and radiant multitude. They remind the speaker of a company of lambs sitting by the thousands and “raising their innocent hands” in prayer. Then they begin to sing, sounding like “a mighty wind” or “harmonious thunderings,” while their guardians, “the aged men,” stand by. The speaker, moved by the pathos of the vision of the children in church, urges the reader to remember that such urchins as these are actually angels of God.

Form

The poem has three stanzas, each containing two rhymed couplets. The lines are longer than is typical for Blake’sSongs, and their extension suggests the train of children processing toward the cathedral, or the flowing river to which they are explicitly compared.

Commentary

The poem’s dramatic setting refers to a traditional Charity School service at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Ascension Day, celebrating the fortieth day after the resurrection of Christ. These Charity Schools were publicly funded institutions established to care for and educate the thousands of orphaned and abandoned children in London. The first stanza captures the movement of the children from the schools to the church, likening the lines of children to the Thames River, which flows through the heart of London: the children are carried along by the current of their innocent faith. In the second stanza, the metaphor for the children changes. First they become “flowers of London town.” This comparison emphasizes their beauty and fragility; it undercuts the assumption that these destitute children are the city’s refuse and burden, rendering them instead as London’s fairest and finest. Next the children are described as resembling lambs in their innocence and meekness, as well as in the sound of their little voices. The image transforms the character of humming “multitudes,” which might first have suggested a swarm or hoard of unsavory creatures, into something heavenly and sublime. The lamb metaphor links the children to Christ (whose symbol is the lamb) and reminds the reader of Jesus’s special tenderness and care for children. As the children begin to sing in the third stanza, they are no longer just weak and mild; the strength of their combined voices raised toward God evokes something more powerful and puts them in direct contact with heaven. The simile for their song is first given as “a mighty wind” and then as “harmonious thunderings.” The beadles, under whose authority the children live, are eclipsed in their aged pallor by the internal radiance of the children. In this heavenly moment the guardians, who are authority figures only in an earthly sense, sit “beneath” the children.

The final line advises compassion for the poor. The voice of the poem is neither Blake’s nor a child’s, but rather that of a sentimental observer whose sympathy enhances an already emotionally affecting scene. But the poem calls upon the reader to be more critical than the speaker is: we are asked to contemplate the true meaning of Christian pity, and to contrast the institutionalized charity of the schools with the love of which God—and innocent children—are capable. Moreover, the visual picture given in the first two stanzas contains a number of unsettling aspects: the mention of the children’s clean faces suggests that they have been tidied up for this public occasion; that their usual state is quite different. The public display of love and charity conceals the cruelty to which impoverished children were often subjected. Moreover, the orderliness of the children’s march and the ominous “wands” (or rods) of the beadles suggest rigidity, regimentation, and violent authority rather than charity and love. Lastly, the tempestuousness of the children’s song, as the poem transitions from visual to aural imagery, carries a suggestion of divine wrath and vengeance.

“Holy Thursday”

The poem begins with a series of questions: how holy is the sight of children living in misery in a prosperous country? Might the children’s “cry,” as they sit assembled in St. Paul’s Cathedral on Holy Thursday, really be a song? “Can it be a song of joy?” The speaker’s own answer is that the destitute existence of so many children impoverishes the country no matter how prosperous it may be in other ways: for these children the sun does not shine, the fields do not bear, all paths are thorny, and it is always winter.

Form

The four quatrains of this poem, which have four beats each and rhyme ABAB, are a variation on the ballad stanza.

Commentary

In the poem “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence, Blake described the public appearance of charity school children in St. Paul’s Cathedral on Ascension Day. In this “experienced” version, however, he critiques rather than praises the charity of the institutions responsible for hapless children. The speaker entertains questions about the children as victims of cruelty and injustice, some of which the earlier poem implied. The rhetorical technique of the poem is to pose a number of suspicious questions that receive indirect, yet quite censoriously toned answers. This is one of the poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience that best show Blake’s incisiveness as a social critic.

In the first stanza, we learn that whatever care these children receive is minimal and grudgingly bestowed. The “cold and usurous hand” that feeds them is motivated more by self-interest than by love and pity. Moreover, this “hand” metonymically represents not just the daily guardians of the orphans, but the city of London as a whole: the entire city has a civic responsibility to these most helpless members of their society, yet it delegates or denies this obligation. Here the children must participate in a public display of joy that poorly reflects their actual circumstances, but serves rather to reinforce the self-righteous complacency of those who are supposed to care for them.

The song that had sounded so majestic in the Songs of Innocence shrivels, here, to a “trembling cry.” In the first poem, the parade of children found natural symbolization in London’s mighty river. Here, however, the children and the natural world conceptually connect via a strikingly different set of images: the failing crops and sunless fields symbolize the wasting of a nation’s resources and the public’s neglect of the future. The thorns, which line their paths, link their suffering to that of Christ. They live in an eternal winter, where they experience neither physical comfort nor the warmth of love. In the last stanza, prosperity is defined in its most rudimentary form: sun and rain and food are enough to sustain life, and social intervention into natural processes, which ought to improve on these basic necessities, in fact reduce people to poverty while others enjoy plenitude. LONDON INTRODUCTION

In A Nutshell

Ready for a history lesson, Shmoopers? Great. Settle in, because here we go. Once upon a time, in 1789, a little something called the French Revolution erupted in—you guessed it —France. While English radicals like William Blake hailed the event as a glorious new beginning, and an end to tyranny and despotism, more conservative thinkers saw the whole thing as a gross affront to everything good about European civilization. In addition to polarizing opinion, the revolution also contributed to the growth of radical political groups throughout England, a fact that worried the authorities. They were so freaked out, in fact, that they started to crack down on things like freedom of the press. This repression only increased as things got worse in France. The revolution, which had started out so promising, quickly deteriorated into a mess of bloodshed, mass executions, and power struggles. Bad times.

Blake was so affected by the events in France, and how people in England responded to them, that he decided to change the world by writing a few children's books—well, sort of children's books. In 1789 he published a collection called Songs of Innocence, a series of illustrated poems that more or less resemble simple nursery rhymes—though they're far more complicated once you dive in. Take a peek here to see what we mean.

Blake republished the book in 1794 and retitled it Songs of Innocence and Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. (You can look at all of those poems right here.) He did more than just change the title, however. He added many more poems to the bunch—all those that make up the "experience" part (i.e., the second part). Among these was "London" (check out the illustrated version here).

Okay, so why write children's poems during a time of political and cultural crisis? That's a complex question, but lucky for you, we've got answers. First, Blake, like many other poets of his age (Wordsworth especially) was fascinated by children—their undistorted, pure vision of the world was admirable, something to emulate. In a way, writing poems for them (or at least in the style of poetry aimed at them) was Blake's way of trying to influence the next generation.

It was also Blake's way of influencing his own generation. By writing simple, direct poems, Blake was able to dispense with any usual high-falutin' stuff that can sometimes hinder more "serious" art, especially poetry. At the same time, he was able to make all his political claims (the poems are saturated with the language of revolution, freedom, confinement) without necessarily tipping off the authorities. Who, after all, is gonna think twice about a few kids' poems anyway, especially if they're not so obviously about politics?

"London," is a very sneaky, and very dark, poem. There's nothing about how great the Thames looks at night, nothing about England's rich literary history. Nope. The poem is all about dirt, filth, disease ("plague"), prostitution, child labor—basically everything that Blake felt was wrong about his city. In fact, many of the poems in the Songs of Experience are bummed out in this way, whereas those in Songs of Innocence tend to be more carefree, lighthearted, and less obsessed with negativity. "London" falls squarely in the Experience camp, though, and it's quite an experience of the seedy underbelly of eighteenth-century English society.

WHY SHOULD I CARE?

Beverly Hills, California. Talk about an amazing place. It's so upscale it's ridiculous. But even so, you could easily make a wrong turn there and find yourself face to face with a big dumpster where one of Beverly Hills' famous restaurants throws out their garbage. And you could just as easily find a homeless guy, who looks like death, hanging out by this dumpster along with, perhaps, some rats and other nasty critters. Our point? Even the world's nicest places have their dirty parts, their dark underbelly, so to speak. It's really kind of a fact of life.

This fact of life is what William Blake's "London" explores. In the 1790s, London was a major commercial center, a burgeoning metropolis. Like any human community, it was beset with its own share of problems—a dark side, let's say, that many probably chose to ignore. The chimney-sweeper, the soldier sighing, the harlot spreading venereal disease, the institution of marriage in shambles, the beautiful Thames a "charter'd" piece of junk— these are Blake's sick, homeless people hanging around a dumpster, or the nasty rats that you think have no business in Beverly Hills. They are the sad facts of life that may not have always been as present in the consciousness of English citizens as they should have been.

So think of this poem as a smelly, gross wake-up call. "Hey," Blake seems to be shouting, "open your eyes (and noses), guys! Not everything around here is high-fives and pony rides." This poem points to larger societal problems, and it isn't just about how there are bad things going on in London, either. It's also about trying to explain the causes of those bad things. And if you want to make the world a better place (and really, who doesn't?), then you have to understand how the bad parts got that way in the first place. This poem, then, is a great motivator in helping us to think about how the less fortunate live, and how we might, even in some small way, lend a hand to solve a problem.

LONDON SUMMARY

London was a bad place back in the 1790s. Just ask the speaker of this poem, who takes a walk around an area near the Thames. He can hear all kinds of cries, from adults and kids alike. He sees people who look just awful, a church that's getting blacker all the time, and a palace that appears to have blood on its walls. Eesh. While walking at midnight, he hears something really bad: a harlot (prostitute) cursing her infant for crying. All in all? Bad times, y'all.

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 1-2

I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,  The speaker begins "London" by telling us a little story. He wanders through each "charter'd street" that happens to be "near where the charter'd Thames does flow."

 Hmm, seems a little repetitive doesn't it? True, but this is probably because the speaker really wants to emphasize this whole "charter'd" business.

 Speaking of which, that little word can mean a number of different things. In this context, it has the sense of "confined" or "mapped out" or "legally defined."

 Hmm, what do we mean by "legally defined"? Well, "charter" often refers to a document issued by a government or political official that grants certain rights or privileges, defines an entity, that sort of thing.

 In these lines "charter'd" evokes all of these different senses. The speaker is suggesting that the streets of London, and even theThames itself (the river that flows through London), are increasingly the subject of government control.

 Alternatively, they are increasingly constricted, rigidly defined—in other words, not "open" or "free."

 Now we should tell you that, in lots and lots of Blake's poems, both in the Songs of Innocence and Experience and elsewhere, constriction, narrowness, and the government are usually not the greatest of things. Blake is always about openness, freedom, imagination.

 To summarize then: the speaker wanders through London, and notices that something is amiss. (History note: Just in case you wanted to know, here's an idea of what the Thames may have looked like in Blake's day.)

Lines 3-4

And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

 And sure enough, all those ominous hints in the word "charter'd" are made much more explicit when the speaker, as he does now, tells us what he sees.

 He is able to "mark," or observe, in every face he meets, "marks of weakness, marks of woe."

 These sad signs are on every face that he meets.

 Well that's not good, but what is the cause of these marks? Well, that's just it. He doesn't tell us, at least not in these lines.

 All we learn is that society doesn't seem to be a good place—everybody seems worn down, tired, hurt, in pain, etc.  Now, there is one little funny thing about that word "mark" that you should be aware of. Sometimes, it means to make a mark, or a note (as in your bowling league: "Mark it zero, dude. Next frame.")

 It is possible that these "marks" aren't actually there in any real sense, but that the speaker is marking them (imprinting them) on people he sees. In other words, it's possible that these "marks" are just in the speaker's head.

 We know this sounds totally bizarre and weird, but for a writer like Blake the double meanings of words like "mark" are always at play. And besides, Blake is a writer is always interested in the question of what is actually real and what we make ourselves and pretend is real.

 Think of it kind of like a person on drugs: they may see things that they think are really there, but aren't. Under the influence of the drug their brains convince them such things are real.

 Blake himself actually saw tons of crazy stuff that he thought was real (like the ghost of his brother), so this example isn't really that ridiculous.

 In fact, lots of people in the nineteenth century thought Blake was really, really wacky. And in many ways, he really kind of was. We mean, could a totally sane, normal, run-of-the-mill person really draw this. So, it seems like a good idea to keep an eye on the issue of what is real and what is not real in this poem.

 Quick form and meter check: The poem seems to be written mostly in iambic tetrameter. This means that each line contains four (tetra-) iambs.

 Or, most lines do. Lucky for us, one of the few exceptions to the tetrameter happens in this stanza. Line 4 contains only 7 syllables, which means we're one short. OMG, what does this all mean? Head on over to "Form and Meter" to read a possible explanation. Don't worry. We'll still be here when you get back.

STANZA 2 SUMMARY

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 5-8

In every cry of every man, In every Infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

 In a textbook display of anaphora, the speaker tells us in the second stanza that he "hears" the "mind-forg'd manacles" in just about everything.

 The speaker can hear "mind-forg'd manacles" everywhere.  That sounds bad, but what are they? This phrase is very famous, and is not easy to define.

 First up: "manacles." Those are shackles, irons, handcuffs, things like that—really anything that confines, or constricts.

 This goes hand in hand with all that business about "charter'd" we discussed in lines 1-4. The same goes for "ban." A ban, or prohibition, is a form of restriction.

 Meanwhile, what about "mind-forg'd"? This is definitely kind of weird, and there are a couple ways to understand it (we think).

 First, it might help to think of "mind" in a very general, historical sense, as in "the late eighteenth century mind" or something like that. In a way, "mind" refers to the larger set of historical circumstances—intellectual, political, and the like—that collectively make up "London" in the later eighteenth century. It is some combination of the Industrial Revolution and the politics that lead to "charter'd" streets, among other things, that creates the "manacles" that shackle the people the speaker sees.

 So that's one way to see this, but what about some of those "other" ways to understand these lines?

 We told you in our summary of lines 1-4 that Blake likes to blur the line between imagination and reality. Well, the whole "mind-forg'd" business again reminds us that one particular speaker is viewing everything. It's entirely possible that these "manacles" he supposedly sees are the product of his own "mind." In this sense, the manacles aren't real but, potentially, "forg'd" by his own mind. Hmm, intriguing.

 Alternatively, it is even possible that these manacles aren't "real" or tangible in the same way as handcuffs, but are rather more like mental shackles. In other words, the speaker may be claiming that the evils he sees aren't tangible, like "marks of weakness" or "marks of woe," but rather intangible in the way that a mindset or way of thinking is.

 Putting this another way, you could say that the thing that really imprisons or manacles the people the speaker meets is not something obvious like poverty or disease, but the way they think, the way they approach life.

 From this perspective, the solution is simply a matter of changing the way one looks at things, turning one's "mind" into a source of freedom rather than confinement.

 Phew. That's a whole lot packed into just a few words isn't it?

 But hey, in our "Nutshell" and "Why Should I Care?" sections we promised to prove to you that these little kiddy poems of Blake's were really, really complex. Following our lead now? STANZA 3 SUMMARY

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 9-10

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry Every blackning Church appalls;

 Things start to get just a wee bit trickier in the poem's third stanza. Don't worry, we said "wee bit," and we meant "wee bit."

 The key here is that you have to pretend the word "hear" is still floating around somewhere. In other words, the speaker also "hears" how the chimney-sweeper's cry "appals" "every blackning Church."

 Yes, "appalls" is the verb that goes with "chimney-sweeper's cry." It's weird that it occurs at the end of the line, but that's okay. This is poetry.

 A chimney sweeper, or a chimney sweep, is, or was, exactly that: somebody that cleans chimneys. Back in Blake's day, this wonderful, disgusting, dirty, dangerous job was usually reserved for children, as you can read about here.

 Did we say kids? Yes, kids, usually really young ones. These little kids went down the chimneys to clean them because they were small enough to fit, and hence ideal for the task. You see, there weren't really any child labor laws, more like none whatsoever. While eventually kids received protection from this sanctioned abuse (there's really no other way to describe it), it lasted long enough. Chimney sweeping was a really dangerous job. Most of the kids that were lucky enough to do the work were orphans (often under the protection of the church), and they usually didn't bathe very often and were thus dirty for days on end.

 Besides being really icky, soot, as you may have guessed, is also very carcinogenic. Lots of kids got lots of cancer from spending so much time working in it.

 Also, the risk of going down a chimney to clean it, Santa Claus style, and then getting stuck was totally real, if not common, or always likely. So, just add this to the whole cancer thing.

 Anyway, as we mentioned, this job usually fell to orphans in the care of the church and other religious institutions, which explains why the speaker mentions a "blackning Church."

 Speaking of that church, let's make sure we're on the same page with that word "blackning." That word just means "blackening," but it's not clear if the church is becoming blacker (i.e., in a state of blackening) or blackening other things (like little kids).  Come to think of it, they're both kind of the same thing. The church, which was partly responsible for this whole chimney sweeping business, was responsible for "blackening" those little kids.

 It made them both literally blacker (they were covered in soot) but also metaphorically blacker, in the sense of less innocent and closer to death (death is often associated in poetry and elsewhere with the color black).

 Because the church is involved in this deplorable practice, it, as an institution, is becoming blacker—less good, pure, and devoted to the betterment of humanity.

 All of this brings us back to that strange word "appalls." We'll admit, it's a funny word to use here—and not funny as in hilarious, but funny as in strange. It seems to have the sense of "shames" or "casts aspersion on," or something like that. The chimney sweepers cry, the church is partly responsible for it, therefore that cry shames the church.

 Note: it is possible that the church is appalled by the cries, in the sense of shocked, but this seems less likely, given the church's historical ties to the practice.

 And we wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't tell you that Blake was really, really against child labor. Side note: is anybody actually pro child labor (aside from The Simpsons' Mr. Burns, that is)?

 Anyway, chimney sweeping was one of Blake's go-to points of attack when it came to the whole child labor business, but also, as we see here, when it came to attacking his own historical moment. This chimney sweeping stuff irritated him so much that he wrote two poems about it, one each in the Songs of Innocenceand the Songs of Experience. You can read about those poems right here and here.

 As for just what exactly these lines mean, well, get your metaphor caps on because the speaker is leaving the literal behind.

 Obviously, a chimney-sweeper's "cry" can't really do anything physical to a church, so we'll have to come up with some other kind of explanation.

Lines 11-12

And the hapless Soldier's sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls.

 If you're expecting to have to carry that word "hear" again you can relax. Here, the speaker simply states a fact, as a sort of addendum to his little bit about the chimney sweeping stuff.

 Now he tells us that there's a "hapless" (i.e., unfortunate) soldier, whose "sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls." Well, cool.

 We didn't know sighs could actually run down walls in the form of blood.  You didn't know that because it doesn't really happen. This is all part of a gnarly metaphor.

 The basic idea is that the Palace, which is here a symbol for government, royalty, etc., has blood on its hands, so to speak.

 Okay, but what are we to do with these bizarre lines? Think of it like this. First, the soldier sighs about something (his recent wartime experiences, his government's military policy, etc.).

 This sigh, an exhalation of breath, is the expression of whatever is bothering or upsetting the soldier. And we know that, because he's "hapless," he's helpless to do anything about what's bothering him—except, you know, sigh in blood.

 The sigh runs in blood because, well, it has to do with the palace—i.e. the government that dictates policy in the first place.

 It's like the soldier exhales, an ineffectual, "hapless" gesture that shows how powerless he is to change his situation. Instead, all he can do is defend the all- powerful Palace, or (worse) enforce its orders with violence (after all, soldiers tend to be trained to do that sort of thing).

 And so, the expression of both his discontent and powerlessness (the sigh) turns to blood and runs down the palace walls. The Palace is marked by the bloodshed that the solider would be forced to carry out. This image, then, is another reminder of the "manacles" the speaker mentions in line 8. He says that these restrictions are everywhere, but now in this stanza he's giving us two examples to prove his point: the suffering chimney sweep and the solider—who as a tool of the "Palace" (or government), is powerless to prevent himself from causing the suffering ("blood") of others.

STANZA 4 SUMMARY

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Lines 13-16

But most thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot's curse Blasts the new-born Infant's tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

 The poem's final stanza has arrived. After that whole business about "mind-forg'd manacles," these are the most famous lines in the poem.

 The speaker hears lots of things, but "most" of all he hears a youthful harlot at midnight—not just any old harlot (prostitute), but one who is young (sigh) and cursing a "new-born Infant's tear."  Okay, so there's a foul-mouthed prostitute and a "new-born Infant." Is it her child? Maybe, but we don't know for sure.

 But it doesn't really matter. The point the speaker is making is that babies are born into a world where young women have become prostitutes (harlots), and their tears (babies cry a lot) get cursed at instead of soothed. ("Blasts" here means something like "attacked" or "assaulted," but in a very metaphorical way. It's like saying, "I went out in the street and my ears were blasted by that guy next door's loud lawnmower.")

 In addition to this whole business about children being born into a corrupt, dirty world—cursing, harlots, blasting—there's something else going on. This same harlot-curse, which "blasts" the baby's tear, also "blights with plagues the Marriage hearse."

 Again, like that stuff earlier with the blood and the sighs, this is some really gnarly metaphorical stuff.

 The words "blight" and "plague" are similar. They both refer to disease—a plague is, well, a plague, whereas the noun "blight" describes a kind of barrenness or infertility usually brought on by drought or disease.

 But "blight" here is a verb, so we'll take it to mean something like "tarnishes," even "mars" or "destroys."

 Basically, then, the harlot's curse, which is probably a symbol for her terrible life experiences (much like the soldier's sigh is for his), totally ruins the "marriage Hearse." The curse—the fact that there even is a youthful harlot in existence— completely destroys the institution of marriage. It "plagues" it, so to speak.

 This is why the speaker uses the semi-oxymoronic phrase "marriage Hearse." We associate marriage with children, life, union.

 A hearse, obviously, symbolizes death. Marriage is a "hearse" because, well, unmarried harlots are running around, babies seem to have no mothers (who is the mother of this baby again?), and there are no fathers to be found.

 Marriage has been plagued, we might say, bothfiguratively and perhaps even literally. How? Well, "plague" may possibly be a reference to venereal disease, which definitely existed in Blake's day. The marriage hearse may be blighted, potentially, by the transmission of whatever diseases the harlot's profession has given her.

 The harlot, in other words, engages in prostitution, which gives her some kind of sexual "plague," which she brings to her marriage (as well as the marriages of her clients).

 But hey, marriage is already a "hearse" anyway (an institution of death)—at least according to this speaker—so this just adds insult to injury.  So, in the speaker's "London," life is not a bowl of cuddly babies and happily-ever- afters. Instead, it's disease, suffering, and misery. Bad times.

SOUND AND HEARING

Symbol Analysis

Cries, cries, voices, cries again—sound is everywhere in this poem. For the speaker of this poem, there is no greater sign that things have gone terribly wrong in London than in the multitude of cries he hears. London sounds downright awful—kids cry, grown men cry, chimney-sweepers cry, harlots utter curses, and on and on and on. Everybody is crying because life is sad, full of pain, you name it. Okay, so what should the city sound like then? Well, the speaker doesn't give us any good answers, but all these people shouldn't be crying, that's for darn sure.

 Lines 5-7: The repetition of "every" in these lines indicates how widespread pain and sadness are in London. The anaphora, another form of repetition, conveys a similar idea.

 Line 8: "Mind-forg'd manacles"? This is definitely a metaphor, but for what? Well, the speaker says he can "hear" them (just think of shackles clanking together), so it must have something to do with all those cries he's just discussed. Manacles can be read as either a metaphor for all the different ways the political and intellectual climate of London in the 1790s "enslaves" people (this is why they cry so much) or, less ominously, for the ways in which people have managed to enslave themselves. Huh? Without getting too technical, Blake had this whole idea about how our ways of viewing the world can sometimes be our own worst enemy.

 Lines 9-10: The cries of London's chimney sweepers "appall" every "blackning Church." The chimney sweepers symbolize the exploitation of children in the early years of the Industrial Revolution. Their cries either make the church look shameful (for permitting such an evil thing) or make it feel bad for them. Clearly, the speaker is ambivalent about the church's role in all these cries.

 Line 11-12: As if we weren't already convinced that all these sounds were the sign of something bad, the speaker makes it very explicit. The soldier's "sigh" (that's a sound) runs in blood down palace walls. Okay, it obviously doesn't, so this is a metaphor for something. The sigh, the exhalation of breath, is a symbol or expression of the soldier's frustration. That "breath" then runs down the walls of the palace. The sigh is a way of metaphorically accusing the palace (a symbol of the government) of forcing the helpless soldier to have blood on its hands. It, after all, sends soldiers to war. See our discussion of these lines in the "Detailed Summary" for more.

 Lines 13-16: In the poem's last stanza, the speaker hears the harlot's curse, which has all sorts of consequences. Newborn infants, instead of hearing the dulcet sounds of the Thames, hear a woman cursing. And of course, the curse, a symbol of the harlot's sadness, anger, and irritation with her life, further blackens the institution of marriage, which is already metaphorically dead ("hearse") in the speaker's view anyway. DEATH AND DISEASE

Symbol Analysis

We'll just call this D&D, and no, we don't mean Dungeons and Dragons. The London described in this poem is full of dirt, disease, and death. Notice, for example, the references to blood, the color black ("blackning Church," chimney sweeper), the "plagues" of the last stanza, the words "blights" and "hearse"—do we need to go on? London is not the vibrant commercial and cultural center we often think it is here. Nope, it is a very "dead," unhappy place. Children die, women die, cherished institutions like marriage die or are sick, and so on.

 Line 9: Chimney sweeping was a dirty and dangerous business that, without question, symbolizes death here.

 Line 10: The church is described as metaphorically black. Black is rarely a good color in most literature. The word's presence in the context of chimney sweeping is a play on the dirt and soot that covered children who worked in that industry, but also suggests that the church is associated with death, not life.

 Lines 11-12: The soldier sighs, and that sigh metaphorically turns to blood. Put another way, the palace is covered in blood—has blood on its hands—because it is responsible for this soldier and his sigh (and the things he may or may not have done in battle). No real blood runs down the walls, so this is a metaphor for governmental responsibility for death.

 Line 15: The word "blasts" doesn't sound too good—nope, sure doesn't. Here it is a metaphor for how the infant's tears are interrupted—stained and sullied by a gross curse. The word "blast" also, however, makes us think the infant's innocence is being metaphorically destroyed or killed.

 Line 16: "Blights with plagues"—there's a deathly phrase if we ever saw one. The harlot's curse possesses a strong, killing power. It ruins or destroys the institution of marriage by blighting it with plagues literally and metaphorically. It is responsible for real disease (of the venereal kind) but also for metaphorically sullying or ruining marriage with promiscuity and prostitution. Marriage is definitely dead; it's not a union or symbol of life, but a hearse.

CHILDREN

Symbol Analysis

If you've read our "In a Nutshell" section, you know Blake wrote a lot about children. Children are everywhere in his poetry as characters, and many of the poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience resemble children's poems. "London" is no different. There are several infants mentioned, as well as a chimney sweeper (back then, that deplorable job was reserved for children). Strangely, the children in this poem aren't really doing childish things. Okay, they cry, but their cries are cries of fear, or tear that are corrupted by a harlot's curse. Instead of playing, the children work. The basic idea is that the world is upside down, and that is obvious in the fact that children aren't really children.  Line 6: The speaker hears cries of fear from London's infants. Those cries, he notes, apprise him of the presence of "mind-forg'd manacles," which is to say that they somehow symbolizeor conjure up the idea of slavery and confinement. Infants and slavery? That's no good.

 Lines 9-10: The less specific slavery alluded to in line 6 is made more literal here. Chimney sweepers were usually children. They don't sing as they work, but cry, and their cries "appall" the church, which is to say, cast shame on it. The church, for its part, is metaphorically black, underscoring its role in the mistreatment of children.

 Lines 15-16: The infant's "tear" is blasted. "Blasted" is a metaphor for the way in which the people's innocent crying is marred or fouled by the inappropriate, gross cursing of a nearby harlot. Things are bad when a baby can't even cry in peace, the speaker implies.

ANALYSIS: FORM AND METER

Iambic Tetrameter, with Substitutions

For the most part, "London" is written in iambic tetrameter. This little meter is very similar to iambic pentameter, except that, instead of five iambs there are only four iambs (tetra means four, so tetrameter means four of the same meter). Now, an iamb is a beat that consists of an unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable. It sounds like daDUM (if you say "allow" out loud, you'll hear an iamb). For example:

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. (2)

Voila, perfecto, neato-frito. Ladies and gentlemen, iambic tetrameter.

Sadly, not every single line in this poem is so perfect. Take a glance at line 11:

And the hapless Soldier's sigh.

You'll notice that the first beat (or foot) contains two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, while the last two beats are your regular, run-of-the-mill iambs. Come to think of, there are a number of other lines that contain only seven syllables (like this one), including lines 4, 9-12, and 14-15. Many of them also contain anapests (two unstressed syllables, followed by a stressed syllable).

Okay, so what are we to make of this metrical variation, of which our friend William Blake was quite fond? Well, we have a few different answers for you. The shift from 8 beats to 7 is quite noticeable. In fact, it's interesting that the first time this occurs is in line 4, precisely when Blake is talking about "marks of weakness" and "marks of woe." At that exact moment, the meter itself becomes weak—7 is less than 8, right? The same is true of the poem's third stanza, in which every line contains only 7 syllables. That stanza might be read as a further description of those same "marks." Our astonishment at this little metrical hiccup mimics the speaker's own astonishment at all the weakness and woe around him. Alternatively, you could say that the line itself is plagued by a weakness—it has one less syllable than it should. It is sick, incomplete, imperfect—just like all the people the speaker meets.

Here's another little factoid. There are exactly 7 lines that contain 7 syllables. Well cheers for that one William Blake. In a poem of 16 lines, this is almost half of the poem. This division between types of lines reflects the divisions and fractures that the speaker sees everywhere in London.

It also reminds us of one of Blake's other major themes: the ways in which social life is constricted, confined, repressed, etc. etc. Think of words like "charter'd," "manacles," and "ban," for example. In other words, just about half of the lines in this poem are marked, to use one of Blake's own words, as restricted or compressed or confined. 7 is less than 8, which makes those lines with fewer syllables seem, well, a little restricted.

If it sounds like we're repeating ourselves, that's because we've been infected by the repetitive spirit of this poem. Notice how many words appear two or more times ("charter'd," "marks," "Infant," "cry," "street"). Notice also how the poem rhymes—this too is a form of repetition. In each stanza, every other line rhymes (which gives us a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GDGD). The repetition of sound suggests that what the speaker sees around him is cyclical or repetitive—that the evils of London will continue to persist. This is nowhere more evident than in the fact that the lone E rhyming sound of lines 6, 8, 14, and 16 ("fear," "hear," "hear," "tear") occurs in both the second and fourth stanzas.

So, in more ways than one, this poem's form and meter either advance or reflect the ideas it's trying to get across. Well that's pretty neat now isn't it?

ANALYSIS: SPEAKER

While lots of Blake's speakers are kids, this one is most likely an adult male (and we're just assuming that since Blake was also a dude), a dude that is really unhappy with the state of things London. Okay, actually, he' s not just unhappy, he's downright fed up—bitter, angry, sad. He's getting tired of walking around London and hearing people cry, tired of hearing harlots curse, tired of seeing exploited children working as chimney sweeps, tired of everything that's bad about London.

More than just a dude who's sick of all the poverty and exploitation he sees around him, however, this speaker has some killer rhetorical skills and a corrosive, incisive ability to paint a picture that would move even the most unmovable of people. That whole stanza about the chimney sweeper's cry appalling every "blackning" church, for example, uses the color associated with chimneys (black) to make a claim about the church's moral "blackness." The soldier's sigh, a symbol of frustration or sadness or irritation, is the equivalent of blood running down the walls of the palace (the party responsible for wars, bloodshed, and the like).

Okay, lest you think our speaker is just some slightly bitter, unhappy guy who's a gifted rhetorician, let's throw into the mix, "somewhat of an idealist," in a good way. The whole reason the speaker is so upset with everything is because he has some idea of how things should be. Clearly, marriage shouldn't be a "hearse," children shouldn't be forced to work as chimney sweeps, soldiers shouldn't be sighing, harlots shouldn't be ruining the lives of little children, etc.

Even though the speaker doesn't tell us a lot about this ideal world, William Blake sure did, elsewhere that is. In some ways, this speaker is a mouthpiece for William Blake. Yeah, yeah—we know the speaker of a poem is not necessarily the equivalent of the author himself, but sometimes this distinction can be blurred a little bit. All of Blake's writings— other poems, letters, etc.—advance similar claims as "London." Blake made no secret of the fact that he hated child labor, war, and poverty, that he felt something was wrong with the church, and that he felt people were literally and figuratively enslaved. In sum, the speaker of this poem is a lot like William Blake sometimes, disturbed by what he sees, inspired to speak up and call attention to it.

ANALYSIS: SETTING

Where It All Goes Down

London: around 1794—that's the short answer to the question of where this poem takes place. Word.

Well, if that's the short answer, what's the long(er) answer? Well, the longer answer is: the slums of London in 1794. Now the speaker of this poem doesn't have any specific area of London in mind, just any generic, dirty place where you might conceivably hear harlots cursing and babies crying audibly, a place where "plagues," in the loose sense of disease, might be more widespread, a place where grown men cry and almost everybody is "marked" by "marks of weakness, marks of woe." Simply put, this poem deals with the parts of London where lower class citizens, prostitutes, former soldiers who are now broken, and the like might congregate.

Okay, that's cool, but why not just call the poem "The Slums of London"? That's a good question—hang on a sec while we get William Blake on the line. Okay, he's just informed us that the poem is just called "London" because, while only some areas of London are characterized by these sorts of things, all of London will be plagued by them if things don't change. If the government doesn't stop starting wars and getting blood on its hands, and if the church doesn't stop getting blacker and blacker, the city will crumble into a big mess of poverty, disease, and all sorts of other, metaphorical "manacles." (Thanks for the 411 there, Blakey.)

Slice o' Life

Another way to look at this little issue is like so: The speaker describes a small slice of London; obviously, there were nice, clean parts of the city in 1794. By acting as though all of London could be summed up in 16 lines that describe some pretty horrific stuff, the speaker makes the point that a city like London can't simply be divided into good and bad, clean and dirty, rich and poor. The fact of the matter is, the bad parts of London are part of the same geographical space as the good parts, and the good parts are in some ways responsible for creating the bad (the blood on the palace walls, for example, links this royal residence with war, death, and all sorts of other bad things). London, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest link. On top of all this, it is important to know a thing or two about the historical circumstances of the 1790s. If you've read our "In a Nutshell" section, you know that things were really heating up back then, politically speaking. Revolution was in the air, largely as a result of all the upheaval happening across the water in France. Besides cracking down on the expression of revolutionary sentiments, the British government declared war on France in 1793, and would remain continuously at war with their long-time enemy for the next twenty years or so.

Besides all the political business, there was the social and cultural business. Socially conscious fellows like Blake not only had to worry about their repressive, war-mongering government, but also about things like child labor and a church that, from time to time, condoned barbaric practices like chimney sweeping (check out our "Detailed Summary" of lines 9-10 for more on this). Toss into the mix poverty, prostitution, and disease and you start to get an idea of why somebody like Blake would write a poem like "London." The combination of war abroad and all kinds of reprehensible stuff at home, made for a rather tumultuous historical climate.

ANALYSIS: SOUND CHECK

The speaker is obsessed with hearing in "London." Three of the poem's four stanzas, for example, say something about sound or hearing. Cries, curses, voices, "mind-forg'd manacles," and sighs all make up the sound-scape of London. The speaker doesn't just list things, however; he does his best to make sure we get a sense of what these things sound like, a sense of what London sounds like.

The most powerful way in which the speaker achieves this is by making us feel claustrophobic, figuratively speaking. "London" is a poem all about constriction ("charter'd), confinement, repression, slavery—those sorts of things. The streets seem narrow and controlled, ditto the Thames, and everybody is enslaved by "mind-forg'd manacles."

Well, guess what? The poem's language is narrow and confined too. Did you notice all the repetition? Words are repeated like crazy ("charter'd," "infant," "cry," "marks," "hear") as are letters too (note all the S sounds in lines 9-12, or the "ear" sound in lines 13-16, or the R sounds in lines 5-8).Alliteration is a frequent visitor ("Chimney […] Church"), and there's some textbook anaphora going on in lines 5-8 ("in every"). The bottom line: repetition is everywhere, especially in the sounds of this poem, which makes us feel as though the poem is somehow restricted or limited, sonically speaking, just like London.

At other times, the speaker will flirt with onomatopoeia to try to give us a better sense of the shock he experiences while walking around London. Take lines 13-15 as an example: "But most thro' midnight streets I hear / How the youthful Harlot's curse / Blasts the new- born Infant's tear." Notice how the word "blast" comes busting in right at the beginning of line 15. The word "blast" itself almost kind of sounds like a blast, and its placement at the very beginning of the line creates the effect of a word "blasting" on our senses. Can you find other examples of this kind of effect?

ANALYSIS: WHAT'S UP WITH THE TITLE?

It's just called "London." That's simple enough, isn't it? It's amazing that one word makes us think of so many things: the Thames, Westminster Abbey, the Crown Jewels, Big Ben, Charles Dickens, bad food, rain, etc. It's reasonable to assume that, when he wrote this poem, Blake was definitely planning on his readers thinking of all, or at least some, of those things.

So the very word "London" conjures up so many things, none of which, come to think of it, are actually described in this poem. That magical word "London" is kind of like a fishing lure. It attracts our attention, dazzles us with its sheen, and then—Wham! We're snagged by something unexpected. It seems like a cruel little trick, but Blake is no different in this regard than so many other artists.

In general, the word "London" leads us to believe that this poem is a little travelogue of sorts, a description of a place. And that is essentially what it is, but it is a very narrow, or "charter'd," in the poem's words, view. We see London, sure, but it's the city's dirty underbelly, the dark parts that nobody talks about at parties. If the poem had been titled "The Gross, Filthy, Bad Things About London," would you want to read it? Meh, maybe not so much.

ANALYSIS: CALLING CARD

Manacles

Blake talks about slavery and imprisonment, both literal and figurative, everywhere. And by all over, we mean all over. In his short works, in his long works, in his unpublished works, in his… well, everything. And what's Blake's most frequent way of talking about this theme? He uses words like "manacles" and "chains." A lot. If you've glanced at "London," you know that it contains that famous phrase "mind-forg'd manacles."

"London," of course, isn't the only one. Many other poems in Songs of Experience use similar words. In "Earth's Answer" there's "chain'd in night" (14) and "Break this heavy chain" (21). In "The Tyger" you've got "What the hammer! What the chain" (13). And in "Little Boy Lost" there's "And bound him in an iron chain" (20). Clearly, then, chains, which are just "manacles," are everywhere in the Songs of Experience. Blake was big on pointing out restrictions, then trying to break folks free with his art.

ANALYSIS: TOUGH-O-METER

(3) Base Camp

We know most of Blake's early poems (those in Songs of Innocence and Experience) are supposed to resemble children's poems, but, darn, sometimes they can be just a little bit tricky. "London" is a good example of this. While for the most part the poem is pretty straightforward, there are some weird little metaphors (what, exactly, are "mind-forg'd manacles" anyway?), and some parts that are just downright confusing. We'll go ahead and say that that stanza about the soldier sighing etc. is pretty tricky. Heck, just check out what we have to say about it in either the "Detailed Summary" or "Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay" to get a sense for how un-childlike some of Blake's supposedly childlike stuff can be. LONDON THEME OF FREEDOM AND CONFINEMENT

Well, it certainly seems like "London" is more interested in the confinement side of things now doesn't it? Yes indeed. First and foremost, this is a poem about literal forms of confinement: chartering, a way of controlling, narrowing, and confining things that should be open (like rivers and streets). Then we've got that chimney sweeper, who for all intents and purposes is a slave worker; ditto that soldier (he's gotta do whatever the government tells him). On top of all this, there's those pesky "mind-forg'd manacles," the poem's metaphor for all the ways in which people dream up (that's the mind part) to enslave people. This could be governments planning wars, or governments mismanaging geographical space (the Thames, the streets), or even random people looking at things all wrong.

Questions About Freedom and Confinement

1. Does it seem like the speaker stops talking so much about confinement in the later part of the poem? If so, what effect does this have?

2. Where's the freedom in this poem? Is anybody free at all?

3. Does this poem offer any chance at escape, or does everybody pretty much seem born a slave? Why do you think so? What would the speaker say?

4. It seems like the speaker is taking a walk. How does this fact relate to the theme of freedom and confinement?

Chew on This Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Free?! There is nothing free about London. Even children, the most "free" of all, are slaves —to the church (as chimney sweepers), to fear, or even to the corrupting curse of the harlots.

Not even the speaker is free in this poem. Just look at how the language of this poem is confined—the repetition of sounds and words mimics the poem's themes.

LONDON THEME OF DEATH

Death is all over "London"—literally. The title of the poem may well have been "London: the Dead City." Hearses, bloody palace walls, blights, and plagues—death is everywhere. In this poem's universe, all this death is the result of war-mongering governments ("palace") and corrupt institutions like the church ("blackning church"), which allow child labor, prostitution, and war. Things that formerly promoted life and unity, like marriage, now only create more death ("hearse"). Sadly, the picture is bleak—there seems to be no end in sight for all this death, a fact evident in the poem's extremely repetitive structure, word choice, and tone. Questions About Death

1. Even though London seems "dead," does the speaker suggest that there is a way it may come back to life? If so, where? If not, why not?

2. Are any of the people in this poem actually dead or dying? Why do you think so?

3. Why "midnight streets"? How does this phrase contribute to the poem's deathliness?

4. Why does the speaker describe a "marriage hearse," a car or vehicle that carries a dead body?

Chew on This Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Youth is associated with death, rather than life, in this poem. This is totally backwards, which is the speaker's way of saying London is totally out of whack.

"London" is full of vampires. No, not the Dracula kind. Everybody is literally alive, but they're also really, really dead—inside.

LONDON THEME OF INNOCENCE

Now hold on just a second. "London" is from Blake's Songs of Experience, not Songs of Innocence, right? Yep—which is why innocence is a major theme. Huh? Well, we don't mean innocence so much as the ways in which people have their innocence taken away (mostly infants and children). This poem is also interested in guilt, too. The church and the government, for example, should be innocent of wrongdoing but, strangely, are guilty of taking innocence away from children and infants. Sheesh.

Questions About Innocence

1. Once innocence is taken away, can it ever be restored? How might the speaker answer this question?

2. Are the tears of the infant in the last stanza innocent? Why or why not?

3. What is the harlot guilty of, if anything? Why do you think so?

4. Why is this poem in Songs of Experience, do you think?

Chew on This Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Innocence? What innocence? In the London described in "London," there is no such thing as innocence anymore. This poem cannot describe innocence because the speaker himself is not innocent. He's a dude that clearly has some experience of the world. "THE TYGER"

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Symbol Analysis

The symbol of the Tyger is one of the two central mysteries of the poem (the other being the Tyger’s creator). It is unclear what it exactly symbolizes, but scholars have hypothesized that the Tyger could be inspiration, the divine, artistic creation, history, the sublime (the big, mysterious, powerful and sometimes scary. Read more on this in the "Themes and Quotes" section), or vision itself. Really, the list is almost infinite. The point is, the Tyger is important, and Blake’s poem barely limits the possibilities.

"WINGS"

Symbol Analysis

Line 7: Wings are what the creator uses to "aspire" to the creation of the Tyger. Essentially, they are the power or inspiration that allows the creator to "dare" go about the task of creating the Tyger.

SMITH TOOLS ("HAMMER," "CHAIN," "FURNACE," "ANVIL")

Symbol Analysis

Stanza 4: In the poem, these tools make up an extended metaphor of the creator and his creation of the Tyger. A blacksmith uses these tools to make objects out of super-hot metal. The word "forge" – to create or form – is a smith term as well as another name for a smith’s furnace. The smith reference also ties into all the fire imagery associated with the Tyger, and heightens the energy and danger of the Tyger’s creation. If you don’t think forging metal is hot or dangerous, you might want to visit even a modern-day steel mill.

"THE LAMB"

Symbol Analysis

Line 20: When you read the word "lamb," always first think: symbol of Jesus Christ ("the Lamb of God"). As the tradition holds, animals such as lambs were sacrificed to God or gods in general until God offered his Son, Jesus Christ – his lamb – as the final sacrifice for the sins of mankind. In line 20, Blake references a version of Christianity that states that God created Jesus (Protestant version vs. the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity). In any case, you don’t need to know all the theology, just that it’s a reference to Jesus and an allusion to Christianity. Blake asks whether God, who created Jesus, also created the Tyger. Also, don’t forget that "The Lamb" is the title of another poem by Blake, from theSongs of Innocence; the two poems are often read together. (For more information on "The Lamb," check out "In a Nutshell.") BODY PARTS (HANDS, EYES, SHOULDERS, FEET)

Symbol Analysis

The body parts referenced in this poem – hands, eyes, shoulders, and feet – are examples of synecdoche. Synecdoche is when a part of something is used to refer to the whole thing. For example, when someone yells "All hands on deck!" he doesn’t actually mean that he wants a bunch of severed hands on the deck; rather, he wants the peopleand their hands to help with the ship. So, the phrase "immortal hand" references the whole being or person that the hand belongs to, while at the same time focusing on the hands as the means of creation. The eye is representative of the whole body and person, but also focuses (ha ha) our attention on the faculty of sight.

Also, by including only parts of the creator in the actually poem, Blake contributes to the mystery of who or what he actually is. It’s like having only a few extreme close-ups of a person: you can see the hands, shoulder, feet, and eyes, but you can't see the whole package, and that means you can't even tell who you're looking at.

FIRE

Symbol Analysis

The fire serves multiple purposes as an extended metaphor. First, it’s often associated with the Tyger, which contributes to the Tyger’s ferocity and sublimity (the fact it’s big, powerful, and mysterious). Fire is also a source of energy, and since the Tyger seems to be filled with fire, then he must also be filled with energy. In another sense, the fire of the smith’s furnace is the fire of creation, the means by which the Tyger was formed.

APOSTROPHE

Symbol Analysis

Apostrophe is when the speaker talks directly to someone who isn’t there or something that can’t actually be talked to, such as the Tyger. The whole poem is addressed to the Tyger. Can the Tyger talk? No. Does it even exist in a concrete sense? Probably not. The apostrophe helps the poet keep the subject alive and in-your-face, rather than talking about a bunch of generalities.

ANALYSIS: FORM AND METER

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The stuffy way of talking about form and meter in "The Tyger" is to say it's written in six quatrains of rhyming couplets with a pulsing, steady, mostly-trochaic rhythm. OK, now is the time to ask, "What the heck does that mean?"

Let's start from the beginning. A quatrain is a stanza with four lines. Rhyming couplets are pairs of lines, the last words of which rhyme. We know what you're thinking: in the first and last stanzas, "eye" doesn't rhyme with "symmetry." However, they do rhyme if you pronounce "symmetry" in an old-fashioned way, as "simm-a-try" (as in "I’m gonna try"). So two lines make a couplet, and two couplets make a quatrain or stanza. Lastly, six stanzas make a poem – it’s neat, clean, and simple.

The "trochaic" refers to the "trochee," of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed one (DUM-da, DUM-da, etc.). "The Tyger" isn't all trochaic, because there are several exceptions, but the general rhythmic march when you read it out loud is quintessentially trochaic.

"The Tyger" is an example of a clear and definable form. Good luck finding anything similar in Blake’s other work beyond the Songs, it’s really just not his style. He generally prefers long, prose-like lines with seemingly random punctuation. To illustrate what we mean, check out this particularly dramatic section from Blake’s poem America:

As human blood shooting its veins all round the orbed heaven Red rose the clouds from the Atlantic in vast wheels of blood And in the red clouds rose a Wonder o’er the Atlantic sea; Intense! Naked! A Human fire fierce glowing, as the wedge of iron heated in the furnace; his terrible limbs were fire With myriads of cloudy terrors banners dark & towers Surrounded; heat but not light went thro’ the murky atmosphere

…And so on. So, incredible imagery, almost bonkers visions, stuff that makes you say "what the heck?" yet urges you to read more. But there's definitely no rhyme, no meter, no clear stanzas, no repetition, not even proper punctuation. This is Blake at his other extreme.

ANALYSIS: SPEAKER

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In typical Blake fashion, the speaker is of this poem is really, really hard to pin down. Let’s take this one step at a time and not bite off more than we can chew. Deal? Deal.

First of all, the speaker seems to have the ability to criticize the world. That means that he doesn’t take things as they are, he questions, he wonders, ponders, and explores – all that stuff journalists and philosophers alike are known for.

Second, the speaker has a visionary eye. This is especially tricky. We call people visionaries when they seem to have a perspective on the world that is totally different or mind-blowing, even though we inhabit the same world. If you’ve ever had a teacher who brought a poem to life that you thought was boring, it might be a visionary moment. If you’ve heard an inspiring speech about what the world is or could be from a politician or preacher, that person could be a visionary. Put simply, a visionary is a person who has the potential to see things as we would (perhaps could) never see them.

This speaker is certainly seeing something. That's part of the excitement of reading and picking apart a poem by a great poet – it's an opportunity to experience a new and sometimes wondrous perspective. The speaker creates an entirely new reality for us to explore with him. Blake's Tyger is obviously unlike any tiger in our world, metaphors are grand and mysterious, and religious imagery weaves throughout, evading our best efforts to nail down exactly what is going on. The chant-like rhythm and rhyme contribute to the hymnal or religious undertones, while at the same time the questions and content challenge us to find answers.

Like some crazy kook who wanders out of the "forests of the night," this speaker seems totally out of this world. However, a common trap readers fall into is thinking Blake or his speaker is simply crazy – and write them off in the process (even scholars do this sometimes). The speaker may be coming at you in an extremely new, indirect, perhaps uncomfortable way, but his message forces you to think. In a way, a subject this massive and mysterious (the creation and containment of power) can only be communicated through someone who talks a little crazy-like now and then.

ANALYSIS: SETTING

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Where It All Goes Down

An abstract setting; "Forests of the night" and "distant deeps or skies"

The setting of "The Tyger," or at least the worlds this poem seems to conjure up, are extremely varied. In general, though, it takes place in the abstract, without much more than "Forests of the night," and "distant deeps or skies," to give the reader any sense of location.

However, the lack of a concrete setting is just as important as the presence. Think of watching a play in a theater in which the whole stage is dark except for one spotlight. There is no setting in the sense of it taking place in a house or in a field – it’s abstract. The most important quality, then, is that it has no obvious setting, just like the poem. Blake has placed the spotlight on the Tyger, but where it is, or where the speaker is, are not part of the equation.

Leaving the setting fluid keeps the themes fluid and abstract as well. It also highlights what setting is there, if fairly vague. The "forests of the night" are dark and mysterious, cloaking and hiding the fiery symbol of the Tyger. The "distant deeps or skies" bring to mind the notions of Hell being underground and Heaven being in the sky. Since the Tyger may have been created in either Hell (deeps) "or" Heaven (skies), it remains ambiguous as to whether the Tyger is good or bad. Regardless, it would seem to us that being in the forests of the night with a "fearful," "burning" Tyger on the loose, is scary, whether abstract or not

ANALYSIS: SOUND CHECK

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This poem sounds like a creepy, druidic chant. Think Stonehenge, fire, candles, darkness, and people in cloaks and hoods, chanting this poem in really deep voices. Not only does the rhythm and rhyme scheme contribute to the chant quality, but the parallelism (the repetitive usage) of the grammatical structures in the questions enhances the pulsing beat.

Not only that, but the phrases become shorter and shorter through the fourth stanza, which seems to speed the reader along or raise his voice into a crescendo! If you get a classroom full of students reading this poem aloud, the classroom next door will probably get chills thinking about the strange rituals going on in first-period English. These religious undertones were surely not unintentional, and, along with the Christian images and allusions, contribute to the visionary quality of the poem.

ANALYSIS: WHAT'S UP WITH THE TITLE?

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The title is deceptively simple: it lets us know that the poem is about a tiger. So, we expect it to be just that, about a tiger. However, as we start reading, it becomes clear pretty quickly that this isn’t just any tiger. It probably isn't even a tiger like you’d find in a zoo. It could be a symbol Blake uses to make a far deeper point than something like "Tigers are scary."

It should be said right up front: don’t freak out if you don’t know what the heck is up with this whole tiger business. What does it mean? Why a tiger? Why is it "burning"? Relax, the tiger is the central mystery of a poem about mysteriousness – it’s a device – and scholars have been debating about it for 200 years. As with all of Blake's poems, and perhaps all good poets, don't jump to conclusions. Keep an open mind and let Blake show you a new way to think about it. Is it about a tiger? Yes, but only as much as Moby Dick is about an albino sperm whale. ANALYSIS: CALLING CARD

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Questioning a higher power!

Questioning a higher power! Blake is ALL about questioning, satirizing, lambasting, and often outright attacking the notion of a kind and generous, all-powerful (Christian) God. While "The Tyger" remains too general to nail it down as a critique of the Christian God, it still calls into doubt the ability and power of a being (God or another creator) that should have plenty of both.

ANALYSIS: TOUGH-O-METER

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(6) Tree Line

"The Tyger" has plain language, and isn’t particularly hard to read, but the themes are subtle and hard to nail down. It’s not as difficult as some of Blake’s other stuff, which stumps even the most dedicated reader, but it still throws a couple curve balls at you in the form of confusing symbols and foggy references to "he."

ANALYSIS: BRAIN SNACKS

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Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge

Blake often claimed that he saw angels walking around and hanging out in trees when he was a little boy. (Source) Blake went to art school when he was ten years old and learned how to draw the human figure. (Source)

Blake loved the artists Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo, Giulio Romano, and Raphael. (Source)

When Blake was about 23 years old, he became ill. He was sent to live with a gardener across the Thames River from his family’s house to recover. He fell in love with and married the gardener’s daughter, Catherine Boucher. Catherine was illiterate when they married. (Source)

After Blake died, his wife Catherine claimed that his ghost would often come back to visit. He liked to sit in his favorite chair. (Source)

THE TYGER THEME OF RELIGION

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You can’t get away from religion in "The Tyger." In Blake’s day, religious individuals and their institutions held great sway over people, far more than they do now in Europe. Questioning God’s absolute supremacy was pretty rare, and was all but political suicide. Blake, on the other hand, has no problem questioning God, or dabbling in religious arenas that don’t automatically assume that the Christian God is actually alpha and omega ("the beginning and the end" of the Greek alphabet). Thus, Blake questions who "could" create the Tyger, casting aside the notion that such a being is omnipotent (all-powerful). He also challenges he who "dares" forge the Tyger, and contain ("frame") its "fearful symmetry." Blake is not afraid of religious visions, since this poem is full of them, but he's not interested in simply rehashing the Christian doctrine. Rather, he interacts with Christian religion by challenging its assumptions.

Questions About Religion

1. In what ways does Blake undermine traditional assumptions concerning the Christian God in this poem?

2. If you were a devout Christian, how might you react to this poem? How do you think Blake’s contemporaries might have reacted?

3. Do you think the Tyger is a force of evil, good, or neither? Why?

Chew on This Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate. God, "he," is the creator of the Tyger; thus, since Blake calls into question the creator’s authority and courage, the poem questions the basic assumption that the Christian God is all-powerful.

The Tyger isn’t a creation of God at all, but is God himself.

THE TYGER THEME OF AWE AND AMAZEMENT

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Closely related to the theme of religion, awe and amazement are what the divine or sublime inspire. The sublime is a specific term that used to mean more than it does today. Now, you can say a bowl of ice cream is "just sublime," but back in the day (say, late 18th century England), people would have no idea what you meant. To them, the sublime is (typically) big, scary, mysterious, awe-inspiring, and, yes, amazing. You could get published writing a book about how "The Tyger" is about the sublime – Fearful Symmetry is in fact the title of one of the most influential books about Blake's poetry. The sublime is big and unable to be "framed." It’s scary and "fearful," full of "deadly terrors." It’s mysterious, lurking in the "forests of the night," forcing you to put thirteen question marks in your poem. It is awe-inspiring and amazing. Thus, "The Tyger" is in part about the fact that it is mysterious. It is about the awe and amazement that such mystery and sublimity inspires.

Questions About Awe and Amazement

1. What do you think of the statement, "to love something is to fear it"?

2. Besides something religious, what could be described as sublime?

3. How does the phrase "fearful symmetry" capture the qualities of awe and amazement?

4. If almost every sentence in "The Tyger" is a question, what is Blake saying with any certainty? How is that significant?

Chew on This Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

The awe and amazement the speaker has for the Tyger is the same awe and amazement he has for the divinely-inspired poet.

The language of Blake’s poem is representative of the speechlessness of a person confronted by the power of the sublime. THE TYGER THEME OF LITERATURE AND WRITING

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When a piece of literature is about literature in general, things can get a little tricky. What it means for a poem to be about poetry is that its content somehow reflects on the process or craft of its creation. Take, for example, a song about writing a song: "Ohhhh, it’s so hard to write a soooong, about how much I loooooove yooouu, oooh ooh," etc. It’s a song about writing a song. In the same way, any poem could be about the process of writing a poem or artistic creation in general. In one way, "The Tyger" is a poem about writing a certain kind of poetry. Blake is very interested in visionary poetry, the kind that communicates deep truths about the universe, often concerning the divine or a higher power. Knowing anything about these subjects is really hard, so "The Tyger" can be read as a poem about how hard it is. If we think of the Tyger as the divine or as the knowledge of the divine, and the creator ("he") as a poet, then the poem is about the speaker questioning how a poet could ever "frame" or possess the knowledge of the divine, let alone write about it in a poem.

Questions About Literature and Writing

1. How would you write an essay about how hard it is to write an essay? What would it say about you? What would it say about writing essays in general?

2. Here’s a bit of a brain teaser: if "The Tyger" is a poem about writing about the divine, then didn’t writing it mean Blake was in fact writing about the divine, or just about writing about it?

3. If one reads this as a poem about poetry, what significance does it have for the rest of Blake’s poetry, which deals with similar topics?

Chew on This Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devil’s advocate.

Blake’s poem is about the difficulties of saying anything at all about the divine, let alone conveying some sort of universal truth about it; in doing so, Blake makes a postmodern statement about the limitations of art in general.

The Tyger represents the perfect visionary poem – the quintessential linguistic rendition of the divine; however, the "he," or the visionary poet, is never able to completely capture it.  Revision:William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience

TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > English > Songs of Innocence and Experience

Notes for the AQA Pastoral Unit in English Literatire, the page numbers relate to my edition which is the Dover Thrift Edition.

Contents [hide]

1 Songs of Innocence: the Lamb pg 24-25 2 Songs of Experience: the Tyger pg 37-38 3 Songs of Innocence: The Shepherd pg 4 4 Songs of Innocence: Spring pg 23-24

Songs of Innocence: the Lamb pg 24-25

Picture has the symbols of the young uncontrolled saplings, the innocent child and the lamb.

The Lamb symbolises the Biblical image of Jesus being the Lamb of God as well as that of God being the good shepherd. Also of Easter, Spring and new life, of youth, innocence and the fact that the lamb is a white animal, this in itself symbolises innocence. ‘Little’ is simplistic language as if said by a child with whom it makes a parallel. Little brings the thoughts of being small, vulnerable, how big things treat little things.

In the actual ink print Blake doesn’t use question marks; this is because the child speaking is asking rhetorical questions as the child isn’t actually asking the questions just repeating what he already knows.

‘By the stream & o’er the mead;’ shows the pastoral setting as pure and nice.

‘Clothing’ – anthropomorphism as lambs don’t wear clothing; that it is a human thing to do.

The child seems to be away from the structure of the church – a criticism by Blake over the fact that he dislikes the church. ‘Gave thee such a tender voice,’ is also anthropomorphism as animals don’t actually have a real voice and it is followed by ‘making all the vales rejoice?’ which is the same thing as the hills are not actually able to rejoice.

‘Making all the vales rejoice?’ is also about how nature is affected by nature, lambs are making nature happy. The last two lines also sound like Jesus came and spoke his words like the lamb and they made everybody happy.

The repetition of ‘Little lamb, who made thee, dost thou know who made thee?’ makes the poem sound like a nursery rhyme or song and also shows the certainty of the child in the way that they have been taught.

‘Little lamb I’ll tell thee’ the child answers their own question, this shows certainty in what the child has been taught. Use of the word ‘little’ likens the child to the lamb.

‘For he calls himself a lamb.’ Jesus called himself a lamb; therefore the lamb and Jesus are alike.

‘He is meek & mild;’ Makes the line sound like a children’s prayer ‘He became a little child.’ This says that Jesus became a child; therefore linking Jesus and the child.

‘I a child & thou a lamb.’ This forms the link between the child and the lamb. The Child speaks to the lamb as if it is an equal and because Jesus is linked to both of them Jesus is there too creating a radical idea of Blake’s creating a new trinity of lamb, child and Jesus. The fact that they are all equal links into the idyll of the pastoral world.

‘We are called by his name.’ As God is in everyone they are all holy and they all bless each other in the last refrain; ‘Little lamb, God bless thee! Little lamb, God bless thee!’ the repeated refrain also frames the last stanza of the poem which limits the viewpoint and gives it definite idyllic ideas.

Songs of Experience: the Tyger pg 37-38

In the picture there is a thick controlled tree trunk, symbolising the structure and constraints of society. The tiger itself is stumpy and doesn’t look in proportion; this is as the tiger doesn’t actually do anything in the poem. One of Blake’s sayings was ‘the tigers of wrath’ adds to the tyger’s symbolism of power/strength/anger. Also the orange could represent hell or fire. The tyger was out of the ordinary, it was exotic, strange and barely seen in London. ‘Burning bright’ links to the colour of the tyger, like the fire, which could either symbolise light or destruction.

‘In the forest’s of the night,’ the forest is dark, not as clear, a mystery, a time of confusion. Is the tyger the light in the darkness or does it form part of the danger. ‘What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ The question, as in the Lamb, is who made you, this time the speaker doesn’t know the answer as that is part of experience, knowing that things are not that straight forward. It also shows confusion and frustration as God will not answer.

Stanza 2 is asking where God got the fire to make the tyger from; this almost makes God seem to be like a blacksmith. The use of the word ‘dare’ suggests that it’s not something that is normally done that God has done something brave that has taken a lot of courage. ‘Fire?’ this underlines the blacksmith image, along with the word ‘seize’. However it could also suggest that the fire could desroy the countryside or it could light it up.

‘Twist the sinews of thy heart?’ This makes it sound as if God has made something sinister, he has warped the animal. In stanza 3 there are a lot of deadened sounds, this makes it sound darker. In stanza 4 there are many references to God as a Blacksmith such as; ‘hammer’ ‘furnace’ and ‘anvil’ this likens God to someone who makes weapons, the tyger as a weapon? It is also a reflection on the industrial revolution which was destroying the countryside at the time.

‘When the stars threw down their spears, and water’d heaven with their tears’ is taken from the book of Job but also from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, this is about the fall of man so could Blake be referencing to the fall of God? Has God out done himself? ‘Did he smile his work to see?’ like in Genesis in the creation story except twisted. See another side of God? A twisted smile that is, in part, evil.

‘Did he who made the lamb make thee?’ almost sounds like disgust at the fact that something so innocent and something so ferocious could be made by the same God – a different side to God. Can God be good and bad?

The repetition of the first stanza as the last makes it seem framed though this time it is framed by ignorance and the same questions them not having been answered in the poem. The word ‘could’ has been substituted for ‘dare’ which is a harder, harsher word, this puts a darker stress on things, in stanza 1 the words that could have double meanings could be seen by the ‘good’ meaning but in the last stanza you get the feeling that the speaker has made up their mind towards the ‘bad’ meaning.

‘Symmetry?’ shows perfection/beauty though it could also be ordered and controlled, a feature of society that Blake dislikes.

Songs of Innocence: The Shepherd pg 4

Context: William Blake had a troubled relationship with his father, and so a closer relationship with his mother. In many of his poems God fills in for the father in the poem and the relationship with the mother is mentioned.

This poem lacks a contrary, use with the lamb to show the pastoral idyll.

The Shepherd is the biblical symbol for God, the good shepherd who leads his people. In reading the poem like that humankind are the sheep. Shepherds protect, provide, care and lead their sheep.

‘Sweet lot!’ Blake sees the shepherd as having a good life as he admires the simplicity of their life, the freedom they experience while being able to wander around nature and the honest hard work that they do.

‘From the morn’ at the beginning and ‘while they are in peace,’ (i.e. asleep) near the end suggests the simple idea that this poem goes from dawn to dusk.

‘He shall follow his sheep all day,’ seems to be a little bit of role reversal, shows the caring God, his people go where they want to go but he is always there in case they need him.

‘And his tongue shall be filled with praise.’ Meaning that he is singing, the ‘praise’ at the end suggests that he is singing about God as there is nothing else to occupy his mind in the pastoral world.

‘Lambs’ We are all lambs, therefore the children of God that need to be watched over by their father, or shepherd.

‘For he hears the lamb’s innocent call, And he hears the ewe’s tender reply;’ The child calls out and the mother answers and the child’s want is satisfied – the romantic view of childhood, not as it is in the towns. Context: In the towns people would sell their children as they couldn’t afford to feed them.

The use of sheep – sheep are unable to think for themselves, therefore need to be guided. They follow the crowd, though it could be a negative thing – weakness.

‘He is watchful while they are at peace,’ the sheep, or God’s people are watched and protected even when they sleep. Use of the word ‘watchful’ could mean that the shepherd knows that there could be danger about, or like God knowing that experience is just around the corner from innocence.

‘For they know when their shepherd is nigh.’ (near) suggests that you can only be at ease with the knowledge that God certainly exists, as in innocence where no one knows any different. The use of the word ‘when’ could indicate that the shepherd is not always there to watch over and protect his sheep.

Songs of Innocence: Spring pg 23-24

Context: 1800s writers would commonly use odes to spring. There are strict rules to follow for the writing of odes. Blake’s poem ‘Spring’ acts as an ode to spring but does not follow the ‘rules’. It is written in diameter, which is two beats to each line, this in itself is unusual. This could be because Blake wants to break from tradition, to show his dislike for the structure of the church or because he wanted to say that nature can’t be represented artificially. It is using the simple language that they believed shepherd’s to speak in.

‘Spring’ is a season, it is when there is most optimism, new life and hope, though it also represents the passage of time.

‘Sound the Flute!’ This represents the harmony between the person making the music and the nature around them, romantic poets associate music with shepherds.

‘Now it’s mute.’ When the person stops playing the birds, and so nature, replies, harmony between the two.

‘Nightingale’ and ‘Lark’ are both renowned for being singing birds, this is to back up the song from the flute and the unity between them, the whole of nature rejoicing. ‘Little Boy, Full of joy; Little Girl, Sweet and small;’ these 4 lines show the idyllic and romantic view of childhood, where everything is perfect and at peace, there is no corruption.

‘Cock does crow, So do you;’ A cock crows in the morning, saying that people react to the rising sun in the same way that animals do. Or that nature is happy so everyone is happy.

In the 2nd stanza the rhyme isn’t the same, it’s not in rhyming couplets, changes in the middle but ends the same – the life cycle. Or the fact that things start off neat and tidy and then grow to become more free.

‘Merrily, Merrily, to welcome in the Year.’ This is repeated at the end of the first and second stanza and it makes it seem more rhyme-like.

‘Little Lamb,’ capitalisation of the ‘L’ of lamb could be a reference to God as the lamb, and so lamb being a name, but; Context: 18th and 19th century writers were inconsistent with capitals so sometimes capitalised every noun.

‘Here I am;’ shows interaction with the lamb, the equality between the child, the lamb and God. Showing the idyllic perfect world.

‘My white neck;’ suggests purity and innocence. Though the word ‘white’ makes you think of the lamb rather than the child who is speaking. This ties into the idea that the lamb and child are in harmony, are equal.

‘Merrily, Merrily, we welcome in the Year.’ The last line of the first two stanzas is repeated again with one modification, the use of the word ‘we’. It is used because throughout the last stanza there has been interaction between the lamb and the child so now they have a joint perspective and the child speaks of them as ‘we’. The Shepherd

Synopsis and commentary Synopsis Commentary Blake's divergence from the traditional imagery A song of innocence

Synopsis

This poem commends the life of a shepherd. His time is spent following his sheep, praising them for the innocence of the lambs and the tender relationship between lamb and ewe. They can be in peace because they know their shepherd is watching over them.

The concern of the poem with shepherd and sheep places it within the pastoral tradition. That imagery also relates to the many images of shepherds and sheep in the Bible, which are intrinsic to the depiction of God. See Aspects of literature > Impact of the Bible > Big ideas from the Bible > Sheep, shepherd, lamb.

Commentary

This poem seems a simple poem of praise. Blake's original readers would immediately identify the parallels between the shepherd and sheep and the shepherd / sheep imagery used throughout the Bible to describe the relationship between God and humankind.

Blake's divergence from the traditional imagery

If Blake's shepherd is associated with Christ (described in the New Testament as the Good Shepherd), some important differences need to be noticed:

 The biblical Good Shepherd is followed by his sheep

o Here, he follows them

 In the Old Testament, a famous figure was the shepherd who became a guerrilla leader, then king, David

o Here, the idea of the shepherd as leader is absent. The notion of Blake's shepherd ‘straying' conveys an air of careless ease and freedom to his days. Although he is watchful, he does not need to worry about his sheep, but can meander along with them

 According to the Bible and in Christian teaching, it is the shepherd who receives praise from his sheep for his watchful, tender care.

o Here, the shepherd praises his flock for the tender love between lamb and ewe. They can be peaceful because he watches over them but there is a sense of mutuality. He watches over them but doesn't ‘lord it' over them.

If the poem is read as Blake's shepherd being associated with God, Blake seems to be emphasising the vision of a ‘God alongside people', who loves humankind without demanding obedience in return. He has no association with rules and laws, with leadership and authority, with binding and caging.

A song of innocence

In reality, the job of any shepherd is to be constantly vigilant over his sheep, in the face of danger. But this is a Song of Innocence; there appear to be no overt threats to heighten the shepherd's vigilance. Blake conveys this by having the sheep resting ‘in peace' rather than ‘without fear'. Fear does not seem to be part of the speaker's vocabulary.

In the Bible, the Good Shepherd has to protect his flock against enemies. He is also personally vulnerable - he ‘lays down his life for his sheep' John 10:11. The vision of an innocent lacks this perspective.

Ironically, innocence is always vulnerable to being threatened, devoured and destroyed because it does not understand the existence of what can threaten, devour and destroy.

The Shepherd

"The Shepherd"

ANNOTATIONS TO BIBLIOGRAPHY

Criticism of "The Shepherd" generally falls into one of four categories: (1) The poem�s simplicity requiring little commentary; (2) the vision of innocence demonstrated by the shepherd�s protection of and spirit of oneness with his flock; (3) the more complicated undertones implied in the vision of innocence; and (4) the poem�s pastoral elements.

Simplicity

S. Foster Damon in William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols: "To most of us this poem needs no comment." Damon quotes E. J. Ellis, who in a Facsimile of Songs of Innocence and of Experience (viii) "identifies the Shepherd with Tharmas." Damon brushes off this comparison of the innocent shepherd with a more complex figure by saying that Ellis had to "justify his statement that �there is no book of Blake�s so difficult to thoroughly understand�" (268).

Sir Geoffrey Keynes: This second poem ["The Shepherd"] is a simple one and needs little comment. The shepherd has now put down his pipe and holds a crook instead, the sign of his calling. The two stanzas express the relationship of the ewes and their lambs with their guardian, the shepherd. All is Arcadian peace and trustfulness" (133).

Victor N. Paananen: "Attempts by critics to make the Songs of Innocence ironic, to suggest that Blake undercuts or even mocks the perspective and language of innocence, are based on an inadequate grasp of Blake�s thought. The state of Innocence, possessed by each of us in childhood or in fantasy, is the proof that we possess the powerful, creative, and Divine Imagination. Experience is, on the other hand, the analytic state of mind that finds the limits of the world that our fallen perception gives us. . . . In the Songs of Innocence, pastoralism is the controlling convention; but Blake attains far more with his use of pastoralism than the simplification of relationships that the convention usually achieves. For Blake, the shepherd-sheep relationship and the special world inhabited by shepherd and sheep become the way of representing the characteristic mode of perception in the state of innocence. Poems like . . . �The Shepherd� [among others] . . . project the innocent�s ability to recast his world imaginatively into one where we can not only be at home but also be cared for by a loving shepherd. It is pointless to object that such a world does not exist in what seems to be the world of common sense and �experience�: such an objection would be raised by a Bacon or by a similar advocate of ration perception" (74-75).

Innocence Demonstrated by the Shepherd � s Protection and Spirit of Oneness

Philip Gallagher: "The first two Songs of Innocence (in Erdman�s ordering)�'Introduction' and 'The Shepherd'�transcend the secular tropes of conventional pastoral poetry that they clearly embody and point toward the Bible. The shepherd persona of Innocence is enjoined (104). The same speaker, who naturally (if naively) believes that 'sweet is the Shepherd�s sweet lot' ('The Shepherd'), may echo Jesus�s trenchant metonymy �I am the good shepherd� (John 10.11,14) and its eschatological adaptation in 1 Peter 5.4: �When the chief shepherd [i.e., Christ] appears, you will be given the crown of unfading glory" (105). Myra Glazer: "Most of Blake�s work concentrates on the struggles of the divided world and the task of reintegration. Only the Songs of Innocence portrays the psyche �prior to the separation of things�" (172).

Robert Gleckner: "The Shepherd" is a "song of praise . . .for the creation and continuation of this state of irresponsible gaiety" (92); it is listed as among "the more happy songs" (291). "�The Shepherd,� which follows the Introduction after 1815, also uses these elements of innocence but it is concerned mainly with the protection provided in innocence for the children (or lambs)" (300).

Heather Glen: "[In] the vision of an unmoralized, unhierarchical reciprocity and harmony . . . [the] central [figure such as the shepherd]] would be expected to represent guidance and instruction (68).

E. D. Hirsch: Hirsch quotes Anna Laetitia Barbauld�s "variation of the Twenty-Third Psalm: �Behold the shepherd of the flock. He taketh care for his sheep, he leadeth them among clear brooks, he guideth them to fresh pastures. . . . But who is the shepherd�s Shepherd? Who taketh care for him? . . . God is the shepherd�s Shepherd. He is Shepherd over all.� (Hymn 111). Mrs. Barbaud departs from the Twenty-Third Psalm in making man as well as God a shepherd, but in her analogy the emphasis is entirely on God: �Who is the shepherd�s Shepherd?� �God is the shepherd�s Shepherd.� The catechism is a hymn of praise. In Blake�s analogy between the shepherd and God in the Songs of Innocence, the religious affirmation is considerably more complicated. If the shepherd were a symbol only for God, and the sheep only for men, then it ought to be they, not the shepherd, whose �tongue shall be filled with praise.� Yet the shepherd is obviously a symbol for God; his sheep are in peace when they know he is nigh. On the other hand, it is the shepherd�s lot that is sweet; he follows the sheep all the day. And whom does he praise? The shepherd is both shepherd and flock, and is shepherded not only by his Shepherd, but also by his Sheep. God is both Shepherd and Lamb; man is both Lamb and Shepherd. �Thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. . . . And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one� (John 17:21-23). The poem is less simple than it appears because it subtly expresses a religious perspective in which man and God are not simply analogous but essentially one. God became a man; He became a little child; He is a Lamb. Man is a Child, and a Lamb, and to others, a Shepherd. Ultimately, Shepherd and Sheep, Father and Child are the same" (28-29).

John Howard: "In �The Shepherd� the implied analogy between the shepherd�s protection of the sheep and God�s protection of man is given pictorial form as the guardian shepherd watches over his huddled flock" (48).

Zachary Leader: "Though the poem�s religious implications are impossible to miss (�The Shepherd� is almost a paraphrase of Psalm 23), Blake carefully avoids explicit reference to Christ or the Lord. �We are free,� writes Gilham, �to see a relationship between the shepherd and Christ the Shepherd if we wish, but we are expected, first, to see the operation of watchfulness and protection on which the relationship is based.� Our attention is focused on a single, literal shepherd and the literal lamb and ewe under his charge. The symbolic identity of the shepherd, like that of the child on the cloud, is made to shine through or emerge out of a divinity which is recognizably human. The same is true of the symbolic identity of the lamb. Though the shepherd�s praise can be understood as praise for Christ the Lamb, Blake wants us to begin on a literal level. . . . We must look for Christ in men on earth, in guarded as well as guardian. Man, the earthly shepherd, protects Christ on earth by protecting the lamb, just as Christ protects the human shepherd who is part of his earthly �flock�" (76-77). Anne Kostalenetz Mellor: "In �The Shepherd,� the mortal shepherd evokes the heavenly shepherd of Psalm 23. Just as the ewes reply to the �lambs innocent call,� so the shepherd responds to the needs of his flock and God answers the prayers of man. And all achieve peace, for �they know when their Shepherd is nigh.� Here, a spiritual fusion of man and God is implied both in the inclusive pronoun (�they� can include lambs, ewes, and mortal shepherd) and in the capitalization of shepherd (which thus includes both the mortal and the divine shepherd)" (4).

Martin Price: "This participation in one life is nicely stated in "The Shepherd," where the freedom of the shepherd ("From the morn to the evening he strays") is consonant with his watchfulness, for he is himself a sheep watched over by his Shepherd with generous love. The condition of peace is security without restraint" (42).

Innocence with More Complicated Undertones

Harold Bloom: "The same theme of a primal oneness between the human and the natural, is exemplified in the traditional Christian pastoral of �The Lamb� and �The Shepherd,� but a disturbing element begins to enter as well. . . . The Shepherd inspires a confidence in his flock which is entirely dependent upon his actual presence" (3).

Leopold Damrosch: "The passage [in Jerusalem] that speaks of �wars of life, & wounds of love� goes on to present an unexpectedly pastoral vision of Eden:

. . . we behold as one, As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One Man We call Jesus the Christ: and he in us, and we in him, Live in perfect harmony in Eden the land of life, Giving, receiving, and forgiving each others trespasses. He is the Good shepherd, he is the Lord and master: In Eden: in the garden of God: and in heavenly Jerusalem. (Jerusalem 34:18-25, E178/K664-665).

. . . Beulah imagery is always equivocal in Blake�s poems, even when one speaker or another imputes it to Eden. The speaker here is the fallen Los attempting to express the mutual contentment of the Universal Family; to do so he chooses traditional images of innocence, of gardens and protective shepherds. Once again we are compelled to reflect upon the nature of symbols, which suggest the truth but are not themselves the truth" (236-7).

Zachary Leader: Leader acknowledges not only the spirit of oneness and protection between the shepherd and his flock, but also a darker sense implied primaarily through the design for the poem. "The design manages to sound not only the poem�s dominant note of protection and security, but also the delicate intimations of threat and danger implicit in its stress on guardianship. What Erdman calls the �luxuriant density of the flock, emblem of close content and comfort,� is watched over by the shepherd, and both shepherd and flock are nestled within an enclosure of trees, rich and healthy with vegetation, which block out most of the distant landscape. Though the tree to the right of the shepherd provides a further note of protection, the creeper or flowering vine which twists around the trunk reminds us of the vine-entwined tree on the title-page. That there are little flowers growing from this vine, however, mutes the sinister intimations of the previous plate. We sense only the faintest echo of a knowledge inimical to innocence. If the vine-entwined tree is meant to suggest experience, then it is of a protective not a threatening variety�hence the resemblance of vine to shepherd�s curving body, and tree to upright crook. The turbulent and energetic sky also recalls the title-page. A large bird of paradise (we expect a dove in this �valley of the shadow�), similar in appearance and position on the plate to the bird found below and slightly to the left of the initial �s� of the word �SONGS� on the title-page, soars over and is irradiated by a fiery sun. The sun�s shafts of light, bright with bold-leaf in the original, stretch from the distant hillside almost to the light wash of sky in which the words of the poem are set. Even the branches of the protective tree look as if they are being stirred by a breeze from the right side of the plate. We are left with the impression of a world of energy and motion, one from which the peaceful shepherd and his flock are cut off" (77).

". . . If it is Christ we are seeing in the figure [of the shepherd] on this plate, then some part of his divinity (or divinely human beauty is sexual. For Blake . . . the notion that a human being can be healthy, young, beautiful, and sexless is a blasphemous impossibility. . . . The subtle sexuality of the shepherd�s appearance, like the disturbing implications of the sun�s rising or setting, occupies no more than the briefest moment of our attention. Nor is it in the least likely to undermine the larger sense of innocent security both text and design convey. It does, however, work against any complacent or limited conception of innocence. . . . Gradually, imperceptibly, Blake is calling our assumptions into question" (78-79).

David Simpson: "What looks at first like a happy little poem about protection begins to fragment under careful scrutiny. Carrying over the tone of uncertainty from the page before, one is justified in stressing the first line, with its strange tautology. �How sweet is the shepherd�s sweet lot?� He strays, instead of the sheep, and he follows, instead of leading. But he is watchful, and the implication is that this has something to do with their being at peace. What is the connection? Are they at peace precisely because he is watchful, waiting to restrain them at the first sign of unrest, as an adult overseeing children? Or is the shepherd watchful of things other than the sheep, ready to fend off any threat from outside the flock? The latter reading makes him the perfect authoritarian, prepared to follow where he is led until such time as protective functions might be called upon; he is not nursing unacted desires. This reading, moreover, seems to fit in best with the details of the first stanza. If he is simply an inept shepherd, following rather than leading, then it is hard to incorporate the fact of his watchfulness into a coherent relationship with this imbecility. But to answer the question of what sort of a shepherd we are being faced with, we must first ask it, and we can come to see that the lot of this shepherd is �sweet� only because he has submitted his role to a higher examination than that implicit in the metaphor of leadership at its crudest. The turn of meaning, one might almost say the �joke�, is at the expense of the experienced reader and his expectations of what the business of shepherding involves, and it is the contradiction of these expectations in the presentation of a passive authoritarian which begins the quest for a different sort of meaning. The first line, then, can be punctuated "How sweet is the shepherd�s "sweet lot"?�, where �sweet lot� represents the traditional pastoral trope and its place in the standard poetic diction, which is precisely what Blake is qualifying. Thus we end up punctuating the text for ourselves, in a gesture of �filling in� wherein the �unfinished� state of the poem operates as a metaphor of inclusion inducting the reader into a creative relationship with the page before him�and this must work whether or not my �interpretation� be admitted as the correct or exclusive one. For the shepherd is also one of the familiar metaphors for the author, or poet; in turning around the expected order of priorities, Blake is also pointing out that he himself, imprisoned on the page or bound to the tree in a sense which is as positive as it is negative, is obliged to follow where his reader leads him, providing the raw materials of a �meaning� in whichever interpretative pastures the flock might happen upon. What the larger protective function might be for the author as shepherd is a teasing question, touching as it does on the issue of where the author can determinately intervene to block interpretation, and where he is totally under the control of his reader�s intentionality" (87-88). Pastoral

Wallace Jackson: "During the middle years of the eighteenth century, a body of poetry appeared that is loosely classified as meditative-descriptive. It includes work by James Thomson, Thomas Gray, the Wartons, Goldsmith and other lesser figures. To some extent this poetry incorporates elements of pastoralism and primitivism, and it provides some essential reality principles that Blake�s Songs challenge, satirize, and repudiate�a rejection in effect of certain articles of faith dear to the mid-century poets. In surveying the traditional pastoral of innocence, the poetry of Arcadian idyll, Renato Poggioli proposes that the form �tends to express itself in collective, or plural, terms� and may therefore �look at the human condition from the standpoint of the family.� Clearly aware of this tradition, Blake writes such Songs of Innocence as �The Shepherd,� �The Little Black Boy,� and �A Chimney Sweep,� in which a loving guardianship is evident. Yet even as he accepts the principles governing the pastoral of innocence, in the Songs of Experience he turns the tradition upside-down to write deliberately antipastoral�and hence antiThomsonian or antiWartonian�poems" (109).

David W. Lindsay: "Pastoral is an urban mode of Alexandrian origin, which achieves its effects by imaging a rural world notably different from that inhabited by author and reader. Its implications are at once idealistic and satirical, and despite its classical origins it lends itself to Christian reinterpretation. Medieval artists associated the Golden Age with the Garden of Eden, and used pastoral devices to honour Christ as the Good Shepherd. In Reformation literature the shepherd and his flock are often emblematic of the clergyman and his congregation. Christian humanist ideals found expression, in Renaissance Italy and Elizabethan England, through important subgenres like the pastoral romance, the pastoral drama and the pastoral lyric. Two of Blake�s juvenile poems echo the attenuated pastoralism of the young Alexander Pope, but the pastoralism ofSongs of Innocence is Elizabethan rather than Augustan. Blake�s songs follow those of Shakespeare in celebrating not an idyllic landscape but an integrated humanity, and the pastoral technique of implied comparison thus makes the book an imaginative interpretation of the Fall of man." Lindsay quotes Dike who "finds in Songs of Innocence a �convincing reminder that pastoral, as a way of relating the human realities, can be toughly honest�. In [Hirsch�s] discussion of �The Shepherd," [he] stressed the �radically immanental Christianity� of Songs of Innocence, arguing that this poem defines �a religious perspective in which man and God are not simply analogous but essentially one�. By fusing the �Old Testament symbol of the Shepherd with the New Testament symbol of the Lamb�, Blake here communicates the sense of trust and mutual responsiveness which is promoted by the divine presence in every feature of its pastoral world" (23). "The pastoral strategy of poems like �Spring� and �The Shepherd� assumes that the reader has experienced the psychic and social disorders represented by Tiriel�s empire; and the cruelty and hypocrisy occasioned by those disorders are threatening presences behind the speakers of �The Chimney Sweep� and �The Little Black Boy�" (64).

Leroy Searle: "So far from the Songs of Innocence, pastoral ambitions are doomed when all one�s companions are either �monsters� or �Gods,�. . . �Is this to be A God far rather would I be a Man / To know sweet Science & to do with simple companions / Sitting beneath a tent & viewing sheepfolds & soft pastures� (Four Zoas IV: 51, 29-31)" (47). mkb Ah Sunflower

Imagery, symbolism and themes Imagery and symbolism Themes The distortion of Christian belief about the future life

Imagery and symbolism

In Ah! Sunflower, Blake combines two common images, but employs them against expectation.

Sunflower – According to legend the sunflower was said to turn continually toward the sun (which time-lapse photography now demonstrates!). In mythology, the nymph Clytie dies from unrequited love for Hyperion, the sun god. She is transformed into a flower which tracks the sun during the day, as the sunflower does. Since the sun is traditionally seen as the source of life, the sunflower can also be used as an image which affirms life. InChristianity the sun's rising in the east is seen as a sign of theresurrection and, therefore, of eternal life. In this context, the sunflower's turning to the sun denotes longing for eternal life, rather than affirmation of this one. However, Blake may be criticising this way of interpreting the sunflower, since it seems to speak of foregoing present fulfilment. He felt that the desire for eternity was not noble but belonged to those who have not had the courage to face their other desires.

Investigating imagery and symbolism

 Before reading the poem, what were your associations with the sunflower?

o How have these changed?

Themes

The distortion of Christian belief about the future life

Blake attacks the approach of some forms of contemporary Christianity. This taught people to accept present suffering and injustice because of the promise of bliss and the absence of all suffering in the next world. It also encouraged the denial of sexuality and other powers in the present, in the hope of future reward. Although this was a consistent teaching of the New Testament, Blake condemned it as the perspective of the ‘fallen' person, who would therefore permanently fail to attain human fulfilment. William Blake’s Ah! Sun-Flower: Poem Analysis You are here:

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The poem “Ah! Sun-Flower” by William Blake is both beautiful to the eyes and pleasant to the ears. However, its content entails much more than the name suggests. After closely reading the poem, one learns that Blake’s intentions lie far into the depths of human thought of the afterlife. Specifically, Blake addresses who reaches the superior realm of existence after death. Although it remains unnamed throughout the piece, this higher plane is characterized by Blake as a positive place of light and timelessness. Through contrasting symbols of innocence and experience, Blake is able to show that it is the former that is closer to this higher realm of existence.

In the first stanza of the poem, Blake presents the features that embody this higher level of life. Through the use of end rhyme, Blake

determines that this is a place mainly of timelessness and light. By rhyming alternating lines, the words “time” and “clime” as well as the words “Sun” and “done” are paired and thus related to one another (1- 4). The first pair of words expresses that the “clime,” or atmosphere of this other realm is characterized by timelessness (3). This is because the word “time” is used in the phrase “weary of time,” suggesting a want for eternity (1). Therefore, the pairing of the two words suggests an atmosphere of perpetuity. The next pair, “Sun” and “done,” indicate that this realm is a place of light (2, 4). Within the poem, “done” refers to the higher plane of the afterlife because it is where the “travellers journey” ends (4). The traveler is called so because of his voyage from the current plane of existence to the subsequent higher plane. The traveler’s voyage is “done” when he or she reaches this greater level of existence (Blake 4). The “Sun,” which exudes an enormous amount of light, exemplifies the illumination of the higher plane because it is used in conjunction with the word “done” (2, 4).

Through the use of imagery, Blake further develops the realm’s luminous qualities as well as introduces its positive attributes. Specifically, these aspects are represented by the image of the “sweet, golden clime” in reference to the higher realm’s environment (3). Both the words describing the atmosphere, “sweet” and “golden,” carry blissful connotations (3). The word “sweet” suggests that this is a place superior to Earth, since the Earth is a place of both sweetness and bitterness (3). The word “golden” implies that the higher plane is worthy of praise, as anything associated with the word gold is highly valued (3). However, this word also carries with it a sense of light or brightness. The color of gold is comparable to the color of the light of the sun mentioned earlier. Thus the gold further illuminates the atmosphere. While this eternal plane of light and bliss sounds appealing to all, it is only some who will reach its gates.

Once establishing a description of this greater realm, Blake symbolically introduces the innocence of life. Blake presents innocence through the use of the “Youth” and the “Virgin” (5-6). By nature, both innocents lack age and the experience associated with age. Although the youth is languished “with desire” and the virgin is “shrouded in snow,” neither will act on their instincts because of theses two factors (5-6). Their naïveté blinds them to the bitter side of life gained from experience while their youth shields them from the grueling affects of time and old age. Upon their deaths, the youth and the virgin “arise from their graves and aspire” for the described higher realm (7). The phrase “arise from their graves” suggests that the two innocents have died, although they are not on the same journey that the traveler is on (7). The two innocents still “aspire,” or search for this higher level of existence even though they have passed from life to death (7). Therefore, even with the touch of death, the innocents cannot reach the higher plane.

In contrast to the “Youth” and the “Virgin”, Blake establishes that the “Sun-flower” is symbolic of human experience (1, 5 – 6). While the youth and the virgin are human in nature, the sunflower is not. However, Blake personifies the flower to create a closer relationship between the sunflower and humanity. In the first line of the poem, the sunflower is paired with the word “weary” (1). This word personifies the sunflower by giving it a human emotion. In the next line of the piece, Blake uses the pronoun “who” in reference to the sunflower (2). The two words in combination elucidate the flower’s relationship to mankind. In addition, the sunflower’s name suggests an innate closeness with the “Sun” beyond the capabilities of the innocents (2). The “Sun,” which is a part of the higher plane, is directly contained in the sunflower’s name (2).

Throughout the poem, Blake establishes both that the sunflower represents those who are experienced in life and that it is closer to the higher realm by more than its name suggests. Blake initially introduces the flower as being “weary of time” (1). This implies that the sun-flower has lived for a long time and has gained the experience acquired through life and its events. In feeling exhausted by time, the sunflower yearns for timelessness. The sunflower is also “seeking” after the “sweet” atmosphere of the higher realm of existence (3). Since the sunflower is experienced, it has lived through both the positive and negative aspects of life. As a result, the Earth seems bitter and the sunflower yearns for a place only of sweetness. Not only does the sunflower yearn for blissful eternity, it also “countest the steps to the Sun” (2). The word “countest” both accentuates the sunflower’s exhaustion as well as implies that the sunflower is waiting to reach this higher realm (2). In counting the steps to the sun, the sunflower is quantifying how much further it has to go until he reaches the sun, or the other realm of which it is associated with.

The sunflower is experienced; it has lived through both the positive and negative aspects of life. This is primarily because the sunflower has lived for a long amount of time. As a result, it has nothing further to experience on the Earth. This is in contrast to the innocents. The innocents have lived only for a short amount of time, encountering only the positive side of life. The youth and the virgin continue to search for the higher realm even after death because they have died in their youth and innocence. In doing so, they lack the experience of life and the knowledge of time. The sunflower, who has been subjected to both innocence and experience, is weary of time because it is simply waiting to travel on its journey to eternity. By presenting the opposing entities in the different states of life (the innocence in death and the experience in life), Blake is claiming that it is only after both innocence and experience that one can reach the higher plane of existence.

Blake forms the true meaning of the piece by juxtaposing images of innocence with experience. He creates the idea that the experienced being will eventually reach the desired destination because of his or her time spent on Earth and the experience gained in the process. The innocents unfortunately share a less pleasing fate due to their lack of age and experience. In asserting this bold statement about life and death, Blake addresses a question that has plagued man for almost all of time: Who will reach the utopia of the afterlife? Straying from the typical determinant of this question as a battle of good versus evil, Blake states his claim in terms of the contrasting states of the soul known as innocence and experience.

Works Cited An Interpretation on “Ah! Sunflower”

I think that this poem is talking about wanting something or having a goal and it’s using the sunflower to represent the human spirit and its desire or goal. The sunflower’s goal is to be able to rise to the sun. In the second and third line it talks about how the sunflower counts the steps to get there and how it’s striving to get to that place. In that last line of the first stanza it says, “Where the traveler’s journey is done.” It is saying that once the sunflower reaches its destination, in sky with the sun it’s journey will be finished. I think that in the poem the journey is not only referring to the sunflower’s travel to the sun but to the sunflowers entire life. Since the sunflower represents the human spirit I think that the sunflower desiring to be with the sun is kind of like the human desire to end their journey in heaven. The significance of the sun being in the sky is that heaven is also associated with being in the sky. Next, Blake talks about how “youth pined” or how life wastes away longing with that desire to end its journey in heaven. In the second stanza the sunflower dies, “shrouded in snow” winter comes and the snow covers the sunflower. Blake uses the word shrouded to make that connection of the sunflower representing a human the sunflower like a human is being concealed with a shroud. A shroud is a burial cloth that’s used to cover a dead body. Now that the sunflower is dead, now that the human is dead, its spirit can rise from its grave and aspire what it has always wanted. The poem comes to an end with the line, “Where my sunflower wishes to go.” Blake is now also referring to himself saying that heaven is where his spirit wishes to go. I later found out that the poem “Ah! Sunflower” is actually part of two other poems called “My Little Rose Tree” and “The Lilly” which are part of Blake’s book Songs of Innocence and Experience. The book was written to show the two different sides of the human soul. Infant Joy and Infant Sorrow

Infant Joy

``I have no name: I am but two days old.'' What shall I call thee? ``I happy am, Joy is my name.'' Sweet joy befall thee!

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

Infant Sorrow

My mother groan'd! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud: Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my father's hands, Striving against my swadling bands, Bound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mother's breast.

Commentary by Jeff Gillett

Infant Joy is an imagined dialogue between a mother and her child, who is ‘just two days old’. As yet, the child is un-named: the mother asks ‘What shall I call thee?’ and is told simply that ‘I happy am’ and that therefore ‘Joy is my name’. The mother willingly accepts this suggestion.

The second stanza shows the mother doting on her happy and delightful baby, whom she addresses as ‘sweet joy’ and ‘pretty joy’. The baby smiles and the mother sings. The picture is one of maternal bliss, and as such is wholly appropriate for a Song of Innocence. In the final line of the poem, the mother wishes for a continuation of the happy, untroubled life the baby is now experiencing: ‘Sweet joy befall thee’.

There is no reference to the father in this poem. However, his role is implied, as the new-born child appears as the natural consequence of the consummation of love implicit in The Blossom. That is to say that sexual union and its consequence are celebrated in these two poems as natural and wholesome, and therefore as essentially innocent. This is a perspective that leads to some very bitter poems in the Songs of Experience, when Blake considers the attitude and role of the Church in relation to sexuality.

However, once again the gap between Blake’s view of childhood innocence and that of Wordsworth becomes apparent if Infant Joy is considered alongside its companion piece from the Songs of Experience: Infant Sorrow. Far from being born innocent, the child emerges from the womb kicking and screaming. ‘My mother groaned’ may refer to the pain of childbirth, but it sets the scene for a relationship built on mutual resentment. This time, the father is very much in evidence. Instead of being thrilled at the birth, we are told that he ‘wept’.

The child itself is far more active in its attempts to cope with an environment perceived as hostile: ‘Into the dangerous world I leapt’. It describes itself as ‘struggling’ and ‘striving against my swaddling bands’. Although the baby is ‘helpless’ and ‘naked’, it appears ‘like a fiend hid in a cloud’ and has to be forcibly subdued. The poem concludes with a parody of the happy little scene in Infant Joy, as the child knowingly compromises and accepts a temporary defeat: ‘Bound and weary I thought best / To sulk upon my mother’s breast’. The child may appear to be sucking contentedly, but it is actually not so much sucking as sulking.

Infant Joy is a dialogue between mother and child. Both voices are heard in the first stanza. Infant Sorrow gives one voice only: that of the angry, resentful and rebellious child.

In Infant Joy, the word ‘joy’ is insistently repeated, appearing six times (excluding the title). In Infant Sorrow, the word ‘sorrow’ only appears in the title. Nor does it seem to reflect the emotion of the child, who screams, struggles and sulks – showing more resentment and frustration than sorrow. (Only the father ‘wept’…)

The two stanzas of Infant Joy parallel each other quite closely, although the first stanza is a dialogue, while the second only features the voice of the mother (who is, of course, realistically the only person who could actually be talking.) However, the whole of Infant Sorrow is spoken by the new-born child, hence offering imaginatively the thoughts of a person whose true thoughts can never really be known. Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Infant Sorrow 1794, reprinted 1831 or later Add to album

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Display caption This poem is a contrast to 'Infant Joy' from 'Songs of Innocence'. The child is a person. Accompanied by pain and tears he is born into a dangerous world, though the trappings of comfort and prosperity around his bed belie this. Even in his first natural state of naked helplessness the child conceals what parents and others would regard as an evil spirit ('fiend'). The pressures of conformity ('my swaddling bands') will release this spirit in 'struggling' and 'striving against'. The act of sulking on his mother's breast suggests only a brief respite before the 'fiend' (properly, the child's true individuality) finally asserts itself in adulthood.

July 1994