1.
William Blake
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William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a figure in the history of the poetry. His so-called prophetic works were said by 20th century critic Northrop Frye to form what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language. His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him far, in 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBCs poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre and his paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as Pre-Romantic. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French, despite these known influences, the singularity of Blakes work makes him difficult to classify. William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street in Soho and he was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Blakes father, James, was a hosier and he attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of ten, and was otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Blake. Even though the Blakes were English Dissenters, William was baptised on 11 December at St Jamess Church, Piccadilly, the Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and remained a source of inspiration throughout his life. Blake started engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father, within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Maarten van Heemskerck and Albrecht Dürer. The number of prints and bound books that James and Catherine were able to purchase for young William suggests that the Blakes enjoyed, at least for a time, a comfortable wealth. When William was ten years old, his parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school and he read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake made explorations into poetry, his work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser. On 4 August 1772, Blake was apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, at the sum of £52.10, at the end of the term, aged 21, he became a professional engraver. This aside, Basires style of line-engraving was of a kind held at the time to be old-fashioned compared to the flashier stipple or mezzotint styles. It has been speculated that Blakes instruction in this form may have been detrimental to his acquiring of work or recognition in later life. After two years, Basire sent his apprentice to copy images from the Gothic churches in London and his experiences in Westminster Abbey helped form his artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of his day was decorated with suits of armour, painted funeral effigies, ackroyd notes that. the most immediate would have been of faded brightness and colour
2.
John Milton
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John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of flux and political upheaval. Miltons poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as a poem which. The phases of Miltons life parallel the major historical and political divisions in Stuart Britain, the Restoration of 1660 deprived Milton, now completely blind, of his public platform, but this period saw him complete most of his major works of poetry. Miltons views developed from his extensive reading, as well as travel and experience. By the time of his death in 1674, Milton was impoverished and on the margins of English intellectual life, yet famous throughout Europe, John Milton was born in Bread Street, London on 9 December 1608, the son of composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey. The senior John Milton moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father Richard Milton for embracing Protestantism, in London, the senior John Milton married Sarah Jeffrey and found lasting financial success as a scrivener. He lived in and worked from a house on Bread Street, the elder Milton was noted for his skill as a musical composer, and this talent left his son with a lifelong appreciation for music and friendships with musicians such as Henry Lawes. Miltons fathers prosperity provided his eldest son with a tutor, Thomas Young. Research suggests that Youngs influence served as the introduction to religious radicalism. After Youngs tutorship, Milton attended St Pauls School in London, there he began the study of Latin and Greek, and the classical languages left an imprint on his poetry in English. Miltons first datable compositions are two psalms done at age 15 at Long Bennington, one contemporary source is the Brief Lives of John Aubrey, an uneven compilation including first-hand reports. In the work, Aubrey quotes Christopher, Miltons younger brother, When he was young, he studied hard and sat up very late. In 1625, Milton began attending Christs College, Cambridge and he graduated with a B. A. in 1629, and ranked fourth of 24 honours graduates that year in the University of Cambridge. Preparing to become an Anglican priest, Milton stayed on to obtain his Master of Arts degree on 3 July 1632, Milton was probably rusticated for quarrelling in his first year with his tutor, Bishop William Chappell. He was certainly at home in the Lent Term 1626, there he wrote his Elegia Prima, a first Latin elegy, to Charles Diodati, based on remarks of John Aubrey, Chappell whipt Milton. This story is now disputed, though certainly Milton disliked Chappell, historian Christopher Hill cautiously notes that Milton was apparently rusticated, and that the differences between Chappell and Milton may have been either religious or personal. It is also possible that, like Isaac Newton four decades later, Milton was sent home because of the plague, in 1626, Miltons tutor was Nathaniel Tovey
3.
Romanticism
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Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was embodied most strongly in the arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of heroic individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art, there was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism, the decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that the feeling is his law. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were laws that the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creators own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism. This idea is called romantic originality. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief, however, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the voice of the artist. So, in literature, much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves. In both French and German the closeness of the adjective to roman, meaning the new literary form of the novel, had some effect on the sense of the word in those languages. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place roughly between 1770 and 1848, and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, however, in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier
4.
Innocence
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Innocence is a lack of guilt, with respect to any kind of crime, or wrongdoing. In a legal context, innocence is to the lack of guilt of an individual. In other contexts, it is a lack of experience, innocence can also imply lesser experience in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale. This connotation may be connected with a false etymology explaining innocent as meaning not knowing. The actual etymology is from general negation prefix in- and the Latin nocere, people who lack the mental capacity to understand the nature of their acts may be regarded as innocent regardless of their behavior. From this meaning comes the usage of innocent as a noun to refer to a child under the age of reason, or a person, of any age, who is severely mentally disabled. Since experience is a factor in determining a persons point of view. The lamb is a commonly used symbol of innocences nature, in Christianity, for example, Jesus is referred to as the Lamb of God, thus emphasizing his sinless nature. Other symbols of innocence include children, virgins, acacia branches, non-sexual nudity, songbirds, a loss of innocence is a common theme in fiction, pop culture, and realism. It is often seen as an part of coming of age. It is usually thought of as an experience or period in a life that widens their awareness of evil. By contrast the I Ching urges a recovery of innocence - the name given to Hexagram 25 -, in The Golden Notebook, a woman looks back in laughing envy at the innocence that had previously allowed her to submerge herself in the position of the woman-in-love. Ivy Compton-Burnett had one character conclude dourly of another two that you are both of you innocent though it is an innocence rooted in your wishes for your own lives, beginners mind Credulity Naivety Three wise monkeys
5.
Original sin
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The concept of original sin was first alluded to in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon in his controversy with certain dualist Gnostics. Other church fathers such as Augustine also developed the doctrine, seeing it as based on the New Testament teaching of Paul the Apostle, tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose and Ambrosiaster considered that humanity shares in Adams sin, transmitted by human generation. The Jansenist movement, which the Catholic Church declared to be heretical, the story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man represents a tradition among the Abrahamic peoples, with a presentation more or less symbolical of certain moral and religious truths. The idea of divine justice taking the form of punishment is also ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible. St Pauls idea of redemption hinged on the contrast between the sin of Adam and the death and resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. Up till then the transgression in the Garden of Eden had not been given great significance, as the Jesus scholar, Geza Vermes has said, Paul believed that Adams transgression in a mysterious way affected the nature of the human race. The primeval sin, a Pauline creation with no biblical or post-biblical Jewish precedent, was irreparable by ordinary human effort, the formalized Christian doctrine of original sin was first developed in the 2nd century by Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon, in his struggle against Gnosticism. Irenaeus contrasted their doctrine with the view that the Fall was a step in the direction by Adam, with whom, Irenaeus believed. The Greek Fathers emphasized the cosmic dimension of the Fall, namely that since Adam human beings are born into a fallen world and they thus did not teach that human beings are deprived of free will and involved in total depravity, which is one understanding of original sin. During this period the doctrines of human depravity and the sinful nature of human flesh were taught by Gnostics. Christian Apologists insisted that Gods future judgment of humanity implied humanity must have the ability to live righteously, when Adam sinned, human nature was thenceforth transformed. Adam and Eve, via sexual reproduction, recreated human nature and their descendants now live in sin, in the form of concupiscence, a term Augustine used in a metaphysical, not a psychological sense. Augustine insisted that concupiscence was not a being but a bad quality, in Augustines view, all of humanity was really present in Adam when he sinned, and therefore all have sinned. Original sin, according to Augustine, consists of the guilt of Adam which all humans inherit, as sinners, humans are utterly depraved in nature, lack the freedom to do good, and cannot respond to the will of God without divine grace. Justo Gonzalez interprets Augustines teaching that grace is irresistible, results in conversion, Pelagius claimed that the influence of Adam on other humans was merely that of bad example. Augustine held that the effects of Adams sin are transmitted to his descendants not by example, a wounded nature comes to the soul and body of the new person from his/her parents, who experience libido. Augustines view was that human procreation was the way the transmission was being effected and he did not blame, however, the sexual passion itself, but the spiritual concupiscence present in human nature, soul and body, even after baptismal regeneration
6.
And did those feet in ancient time
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And did those feet in ancient time is a short poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton a Poem, one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date of 1804 on the page is probably when the plates were begun. Today it is best known as the anthem Jerusalem, with music written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916 and it is not to be confused with another poem, much longer and larger in scope, but also by Blake, called Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion. The poems theme is linked to the Book of Revelation describing a Second Coming, the Christian church in general, and the English Church in particular, has long used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace. In the most common interpretation of the poem, Blake implies that a visit by Jesus would briefly create heaven in England, Blakes poem asks four questions rather than asserting the historical truth of Christs visit. Thus the poem implies that there may, or may not, have been a divine visit. This view has been linked to the fate of the Albion Flour Mills, designed by John Rennie and Samuel Wyatt, it was built on land purchased by Wyatt in Southwark. This rotary steam-powered flour mill by Matthew Boulton and James Watt used grinding gears by Rennie to produce 6000 bushels of flour per week, the factory could have driven independent traditional millers out of business, but it was destroyed in 1791 by fire, perhaps deliberately. Londons independent millers celebrated with placards reading, Success to the mills of Albion, opponents referred to the factory as satanic, and accused its owners of adulterating flour and using cheap imports at the expense of British producers. A contemporary illustration of the shows a devil squatting on the building. The mills were a short distance from Blakes home, Blakes phrase resonates with a wider theme in his works, what he envisioned as a physically and spiritually repressive ideology based on a quantified reality. /. Another interpretation, amongst Nonconformists, is that the phrase refers to the established Church of England and this church preached a doctrine of conformity to the established social order and class system, in contrast to Blake. The line from the poem Bring me my Chariot of fire, the phrase has become a byword for divine energy, and inspired the title of the 1981 film Chariots of Fire. The plural phrase chariots of fire refers to 2 Kings 6, Blake lived in London for most of his life, but wrote much of Milton while living in the village of Felpham in West Sussex. Amanda Gilroy argues that the poem is informed by Blakes evident pleasure in the Felpham countryside, the phrase green and pleasant land has become a collocation for identifiably English landscape or society. It appears as a headline, title or sub-title in numerous articles, sometimes it refers, whether with appreciation, nostalgia or critical analysis, to idyllic or enigmatic aspects of the English countryside. In other contexts it can suggest the perceived habits and aspirations of rural middle-class life, sometimes it is used ironically, e. g. in the Dire Straits song Iron Hand. Several of Blakes poems and paintings express a notion of universal humanity and he retained an active interest in social and political events for all his life, but was often forced to resort to cloaking social idealism and political statements in Protestant mystical allegory
7.
Industrial Revolution
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The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and most of the important technological innovations were British, aided by these legal and cultural foundations, an entrepreneurial spirit and consumer revolution drove industrialisation in Britain, which would be emulated in countries around the world. A change in marrying patterns to getting married later made able to accumulate more human capital during their youth. The Industrial Revolution marks a turning point in history, almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth, mechanised textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium, and later in France. Since then industrialisation has spread throughout much of the world, the precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes. Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants. The term Industrial Revolution applied to change was becoming more common by the late 1830s. Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of an industrial revolution, however, although Engels wrote in the 1840s, his book was not translated into English until the late 1800s, and his expression did not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee, some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts, have argued that the economic and social changes occurred gradually and the term revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate among some historians, the commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s the following gains had been made in important technologies, Textiles – mechanised cotton spinning powered by steam or water greatly increased the output of a worker, the power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over 40. The cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from cotton by a factor of 50, large gains in productivity also occurred in spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but they were not as great as in cotton. Steam power – the efficiency of steam engines increased so that they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel, the adaptation of stationary steam engines to rotary motion made them suitable for industrial uses. The high pressure engine had a power to weight ratio. Steam power underwent an expansion after 1800. Iron making – the substitution of coke for charcoal greatly lowered the fuel cost for pig iron, using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces, resulting in economies of scale. The cast iron blowing cylinder was first used in 1760 and it was later improved by making it double acting, which allowed higher furnace temperatures
8.
The Chimney Sweeper
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The Chimney Sweeper is the title of a poem by William Blake, published in two parts in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of experience in 1794. The poem The Chimney Sweeper is set against the background of child labour that was prominent in England in the late XVIII. At the age of four and five, boys were sold to clean chimneys and these children were oppressed and had a diminutive existence that was socially accepted at the time. The poem from Songs of Experience was set to music in 1965 by Benjamin Britten as part of his song cycle Songs and Proverbs of William Blake. Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper When my mother died I was very young, so your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep. Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, That curled like a back, was shaved, so I said, Hush. Never mind it, for when your heads bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair. And so he was quiet, and that night, As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight, - That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned. And by came an angel who had a key, And he opened the coffins and set them all free, Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run, And wash in a river. Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind, And the angel told Tom, if hed be a boy, Hed have God for his father. And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags, though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm, So if all do their duty they need not fear harm. Songs of Experience, The Chimney Sweeper A little black thing among the snow, where are thy father and mother. Say. -- They are both gone up to the church to pray, because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winters snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe. And because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his priest and king, Who make up a heaven of our misery. Interestingly, Blake uses this poem to highlight the dangers of an innocent, naive view, in Experience, The Chimney Sweeper further explores this flawed perception of child labour in a corrupt society. The poem shows how the Churchs teachings of suffering and hardship in life in order to attain heaven are damaging. Interestingly, the questioner of the child offers no help or solution to the child
9.
The Little Black Boy
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The Little Black Boy is a poem by William Blake included in Songs of Innocence in 1789. It was published during a time slavery was still legal. The Little Black Boy was published in 1789, a time slavery was still legal. In The Little Black Boy, Blake questions conventions of the time with basic Christian ideals and this becomes apparent in the third stanza, where Blake uses the sun as a metaphor for God and His Kingdom, Look on the rising sun, there God does live. This line is important, as the reference to the sun not only introduces the running religious metaphor in the subsequent stanzas. In the 5th stanza, we see all of humanity being united, For when our souls have learnd the heat to bear, in the 6th stanza this metaphor is continued, When I from black and he from white cloud free. Here, Blake uses the clouds as a metaphor for the human body and these stanzas therefore imply that after physical life has passed, all will be united with God. Also relevant to this poem is Blakes use in other works of politically neutral colours such as gold, scholars agree that The Little Black Boy is the 9th object in the order of the original printings of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience
10.
The Shepherd (Blake)
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The Shepherd is a poem from William Blakes Songs of Innocence. Blake produced all of the illuminated printings himself beginning in 1789, the Shepherd This poem is one of the three pastoral poems in Songs of Innocence, the other two being The Lamb and Spring. This poem is written from the Pipers perspective and this can be seen in the repetition of the word sweet in the first line which the Piper uses in the other poems of his narration. This repetition may also be read as a subtle irony about the Shepherds lack of agency as he follows his herd rather than leading them through the fields. The Little Boy Full of Joy that is depicted in Spring, grows into the shepherd of The Lamb, in the first stanza, The Shepherd is full of joy which mirrors the innocent nature of this collection of poems. In the second stanza, The Shepherd is presented as a caring and this can be seen in his listening for the call and reply of the ewe and lamb in the second stanza. Readers from Blakes time would have found it odd that The Shepherd was following his herd, Blake allows the voice of the poem to speak for itself rather than revealing a firm interpretation. The Shepherds relationship to his flock is further explored in the lines of the poem. When he is present, the herd remains calm and peaceful, there are also religious connotations in this poem. The image of The Shepherd as Christ is initially found in another Song, psalm 23 depicts God as a shepherd of mankind, and the capitalization of the word Shepherd in the first and last lines furthers the idea that the Shepherd is a symbol of God. In the bible, a presence is representative of guidance. In this poem, the Shepherd can be viewed as the guide or a savior of the herd. Jesus is also referred to in the bible as the Lamb of God, since the poem depicts The Shepherd as following his herd, the reader may view both the sheep and The Shepherd as protectors of each other. The Shepherd watches over his herd with delight as God watches over his people, reversed, Jesus - represented as a lamb - does not lead mankind - The Shepherd - astray. The Shepherd in the illustration is standing underneath a tree surrounded by his herd of sheep. In many of the Songs of Innocence, Blake uses vegetation to show the security of innocence that is secure and this dove underneath the poem mimics the dove found on the introduction plate. Typically a symbol of peace, the dove enables the reader to absorb the peaceful setting that is typical of a pastoral poem, depending on the version, the sun appears to either be rising or setting. A Comparison of extant copies of Blakes hand painted prints of The Shepard available from the William Blake Archive Gardner, vision and Disenchantment, Blakes Songs and Wordsworths Lyrical Ballads
11.
The Echoing Green
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The Echoing Green is a poem by William Blake published in Songs of Innocence in 1789. The poem talks about merry sounds and images which accompany the children playing outdoors, then, an old man happily remembers when he enjoyed playing with his friends during his own childhood. The last stanza depicts the little ones being weary when the sun has descended, the poem is the contrast of innocence and experience, but also the contrast between perception of joys and sorrows. What is happening on the Green will happen again, shown by the old folk who watch the children, the whole poem is written in six sentences with much repetition. The sun does arise, And make happy the skies, the merry bells ring To welcome the Spring. The sky-lark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around, while our sports shall be seen On the Echoing Green. Old John with white hair Does laugh away care, Sitting under the oak, Among the old folk, They laugh at our play, And soon they all say. Such, such were the joys, When we all, girls & boys, In our youth time were seen, scholarly editions all place The Echoing Green as the sixth object in the print order for the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. A Comparison of Extant copies of the prints of The Echoing Green available from the William Blake Archive
12.
The Lamb
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The Lamb is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789. The Lamb is the poem to Blakes poem, The Tyger in Songs of Experience. Blake wrote Songs of Innocence as a contrary to the Songs of Experience – a central tenet in his philosophy, like many of Blakes works, the poem is about Christianity. The lamb is a metaphor for Jesus Christ, who is also called The Lamb of God in John 1,29. This poem has a rhyme scheme, AA BB CC DD AA AA EF GG FE AA. The layout is set up by two stanzas with the refrain, Little Lamb who made thee / Dost thou know who made thee, in the first stanza, the speaker asks the lamb who his creator is, the answer lies at the end of the poem. Here we find a description of the lamb, seen as a pure. In the second stanza, the lamb is compared with the infant Jesus, in the last two lines the speaker identifies the creator, God. Like the other Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, The Lamb was intended to be sung, William Blakes original melody is now lost. It was made into a song by Vaughan Williams in his 1958 song cycle Ten Blake Songs, although he described it as that horrible little lamb – a poem that I hate. It was also set to music by Sir John Tavener, who explained, The Lamb came to me fully grown and was written in an afternoon, american poet Allen Ginsberg set the poem to music, along with several other of Blakes poems, in the 1970s
13.
The Blossom
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The Blossom is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789. This poem is full of images of life, such as the leaves so green. The poem tells the tale of two different birds - a sparrow and a robin, the former is clearly content with its existence, whereas the latter is distraught with it, meaning the second stanza becomes full of negative, depressing images. Another possible interpretation is a one, where the poem represents the joy that can be found through innocent sexual love. The sparrow, seeking his cradle swift as an arrow has been interpreted in a phallic sense, the happy blossom in this sense is therefore the female sexual organs, which is happy upon seeing the arrival of the sparrow. The sobbing, sobbing robin has been interpreted in different ways. Whilst this does sound a rather strange interpretation for a poem in The Songs of Innocence, many of his poems, such as The Little Girl Lost and Found, The Lilly or The Angel also follow this theme of giving in to desires and sexual love. Scholars agree that The Blossom is the 11th object in the order of the printings of the Songs of Innocence
14.
The Little Boy Lost
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The Little Boy Lost is a simple lyric poem written by William Blake. This poem is part of a work entitled Songs of Innocence which was published in the year 1789. The Little Boy Lost is a prelude to The Little Boy Found, speak, father, speak to your little boy, Or else I shall be lost. The night was dark, no father was there, The child was wet with dew, The mire was deep, & the child did weep, And away the vapour flew. The Little Boy Lost begins with a boy walking behind his father, in the illustration that accompanies the poem, the child is actually following a dim light. Night comes and the boy is lost walking in soggy ground, covered in mud. In modern times, however, much understanding of the poem has developed. One can not analyse a poem by William Blake without noting its themes that come from the Christian faith, some interpret the poem as representing the relationship between humans and our spiritual lives with the Biblical God. The father represents earthly pleasures that we end up following. A person can become lost in a journey by acting on impulse, following drugs. Like the little boy covered in mud, adults who have followed the wrong god to a life of sin are covered in that sin, the Little Boy Lost is a two stanza poem with 8 total lines. There is no set metre but it is similar to common metre, in the poem Blake uses internal rhyme in line 8 “The mire was deep, & the child did weep” with the words “weep” and “deep”. This played a role in the simplicity of reading the poem, the use of caesuras throughout the poem also contributes to the easy reading, giving the reader a chance to slowly read and take in the words and meanings. The repetition words, such as “Father”, put an emphasis on the meaning of Father in the piece, the title “Father” serves the use of ambiguity, because one may interpret different meaning from the word. The poem itself is ambiguous, because it has its literal meaning, Blake incorporated symbolism in line 9 “And away the vapour flew”, “vapour” symbolise the “Father” from the beginning of the poem. Scholars agree that The Little Boy Lost is the 13th object in the order of the printings of the Songs of Innocence
15.
The Little Boy Found
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The Little Boy Found is a poem by William Blake first published in the collection Songs of Innocence in 1789. Songs of Innocence was printed using illuminated printing, a style Blake created, by integrating the images with the poems the reader was better able to understand the meaning behind each of Blakes poems. The Little Boy Found is a sequel to The Little Boy Lost, the two poems are written as simple songs, similar to nursery rhymes. The poems rhyme scheme is, ABCB DEFE, with internal rhymes on the third, Blake uses a form of alliteration in the first two lines, repeating the letter l in little. lost. lonely. led. light. The repetition of sound creates a flow, setting the tone for the rest of the poem. The poem consists of two stanzas, in the first stanza the little boy is lost in a bog, and afraid when God comes to him. In the second stanza God leads him back to his mother, the Little Boy Found presents a pastoral setting. One of the themes in The Little Boy Found is the presence of God in peoples lives. This is explicitly said in line 4, God is a common topic in Blakes poetry, especially in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In The Little Boy Found being lost does not always refer to literally being lost and it can also refer to being lost in life, such as drug addiction or just being out of touch. Although Blake was a man, God does not always refer to the deity that most people associate with the name. It could also mean the loving connections and relationships that people have other people. In The Little Boy Found the boy has been lost, and he is then led by the light of God. God appears as his father in white, this portraying Gods innocence and he is then led by God to his mother. The fact that the boy was lost signifies that he might have strayed from his original innocence, however, through the guidance of God he is led back to his mother, this exemplifies the pureness and innocence of children. Scholars agree that The Little Boy Found is the 14th object in the order of the printings of the Songs of Innocence
16.
Laughing Song
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Laughing Song is a poem by the English poet William Blake. This poem is one out of nineteenth in Blakes collection Songs of Innocence, “Laughing Song” is a three-stanza lyric poem. Its rhyme scheme consists of abcc/aabb/abcc, the title of this poem and its rhyme scheme is very appropriate for the message that Blake is trying to convey. The title in itself states that this is a song about laughter, then again in the third stanza, To sing the sweet chorus of Ha, ha, he. Using words like “sing” and “chorus” to emphasize it as well, blake’s sets out to lure readers to the happiness of the prelapsarian times, when things were unspoiled and innocent. Blake is inviting the readers to take part in the celebration after all nature and all the people have begun to laugh and be merry, in the idea of prelapsarian/postlapsarian times, he knows that this great joy wont last forever. This is why the poem begins with the laughter and happiness of nature in the first stanza, personifying the wood, hills, and air. In the second stanza, Blake gradually goes on to the “grasshopper” and “Mary and Susan and Emily, ” the children who also join in the singing of the “Ha, ha, he. ”The children and grasshopper also reiterates the idea of innocence. Using repetition of the merry and laughs/laughing also emphasises the overall tone of the poem. The illustration will also gives a visual of what Blake was trying to express. In the picture you can tell there was a gathering or celebration of some sort and this celebration is outdoor, so all are on with nature and laugh with the trees as expressed in the poem. The colour in the image are vibrant and the border of birds adds a joyous touch, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Copy B,1789,1794, Electronic Edition. Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Copy B,1789,1794, morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, n. d. Summary and Analysis of Laughing Song by William Blake, a comparison of extant versions of Blakes hand painted copies of Laughing Song at the William Blake Archive
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A Cradle Song
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A Cradle Song is a poem written by William Blake in 1789 being a part of his book Songs of Innocence. The poem is 32 lines long and is separated into 8 stanzas, William Blake, author of “A cradle song” was born in London on November 28,1757. Blake wrote a collection of poems that he put together naming the book “Songs of innocence. ”Blake claims “…in a dream Robert taught him the printing method that he used in Songs of Innocence and other “illuminated” works. ”Songs of Innocence includes poems about children and the clash between the corruption of the world and the innocence of the young child. He also uses his imagery throughout Songs of Innocence to give an understanding of what his poetry is saying. In “a cradle song” the mother of the baby is singing to her asking the infant to stay asleep. She sings asking that the child sleep through the night although she is crying, the mother sees Jesus while she looks in the face of her infant. When she sees the infant smiling she sees Jesus smiling on her, as the poem is ending she states how heaven and earth are at peace and have harmony when she sees the babies smile. A key theme in “A Cradle Song” would be the love for her child. The mother says the word “sweet” a total of ten times in the poem and she also makes the infant seem angelic by the way she describes the child. The mother claims she is “dovelike” which the dove is a symbol for holiness and love. This giving the reader a sense that the child is angelic, another theme in the poem would be how she tries to tie the spiritual world with the physical. She does this by saying how she can trace His holy image on her baby, the mother tells the baby to sleep as she cries. This shows how the mother is aware of the world her baby will grow up. She claims how Jesus wept for all and wept for her. She has faith that her infant will be once she can no longer protect her. This makes this very easy to sing and sound graceful. This type of structure is called rhyming couplets, the visual that Blake drew for this poem is of a mother sitting over her infant while the baby is in her crib going to sleep. In the visual the mother’s full undivided attention is on her infant as the infant is smiling, famous English composer Benjamin Britten wrote music to Blakes A Cradle Song in 1947. Britten was said to have inspired by Blake and throughout his career Britten wrote many songs to Blake’s poetry
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The Divine Image
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The Divine Image is a poem by the English poet William Blake from his book Songs of Innocence, not to be confused with A Divine Image from Songs of Experience. It was later included in his joint collection Songs of Innocence, the title of the poem refers to the Book of Genesis Chapter 1 verse 26, And God said, Let us make man in our image. Ralph Vaughan Williams set the poem to music in his 1958 song cycle Ten Blake Songs, the four virtues are depicted by the author as essential not only in God, but also in man, as Mercy is found in the human heart and Pity in the human face. Similarly, abstract qualities like Peace and Love exist in the form, becoming the divine form and body of man. Consequently, Blake not only introduces a similarity between the image of a benevolent God and the human form but also the concept of the creation of man after Gods divine constituency. Regarded as inborn characteristics of humans by Blake, these essentially Christian virtues can be found in every soul on Earth. When Blake refers to the prayer of a heathen, Jew or Turk, however, his Song of Experience balances the ideals of pluralism with the image of God in humans marred by sin. A comparison of extant original copies of The Divine Image at the William Blake Archive
19.
Night (Blake)
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Night is a poem in the illuminated 1789 collection Songs of Innocence by William Blake, later incorporated into the larger compilation Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Night speaks about the coming of evil when darkness arrives, as angels protect, Songs of Innocence was written by William Blake in 1789 as part of his Illuminated Books. Blakes aim for his Songs was to depict the two states of human existence, innocence and experience. The Songs speak upon the innocence of being a child and the experience gained over a lifetime, the Songs are separated into ten different objects, with each object offering a different situation and how it is viewed from a childs perspective. He opposed the British monarchy and aligned his thoughts with Thomas Paine, Blake was an advocate for using the imagination over natural observations. He believed ideal forms should arise from inner visions, Blakes Songs of Innocence is an illuminated anthology first printed in 1789. Each poem contains an illustration by Blake, combining his poetry with intricate drawings. Songs of Innocence is a collection that depicts an idyllic world before adulthood. In some of the poems in this work, such as The Chimney Sweeper and The Little Black Boy, Blake uses irony and rhetoric to portray the corruption of innocence in youth. Songs of Innocence were later combined with Blakes Songs of Experience, becoming Songs of Innocence and Experience, the two collections were printed combined as well as separately from 1794. Night is a poem that describes two contrasting places, Earth, where nature runs wild, and Heaven, where predation, the first stanza describes a landscape with the sun descending, when the world is settling quietly into night. Night has a positive connotation in this poem because the moon sits and smiles on the night, showing how night is silent and this is continued in stanza two, where angels tread where lambs had grazed, pour blessing. The angels duties are described in stanza three, angels visit caves and look in. nest, keeping the animals safe and giving them sleep when the animals are mournful. Although the angels aim to all those under their care from harm, wolves and tigers howl for prey. When these predators successfully attack their prey, the prey is received by the angels in Heaven, in Heaven, the lion is not a predator any more, but a guardian that is dedicated to serving God. He will lie down with the lamb, pitying the tender, gillham explains how this poem gives divine beings a clear identity, unlike other poems in Songs of Innocence. The identity and actions of the angels show how all will be cared for after death, gillham discusses the eternity described in the poem, where the lamb can lie down and sleep next to the lion. The eternity described is one in man and animal will be cared for by a divine being
20.
Spring (poem)
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Spring is a lyric poem written and illustrated by William Blake. It was first published in Songs of Innocence and later in Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Blakes Songs of Innocence is a lyric anthology that consists of nineteen illuminated poems. Each poem is accompanied with an illustration by Blake, Songs of Innocence were later combined with Blakes Songs of Experience in 1794 to make Songs of Innocence and Experience, and were printed combined as well as separately. Birds delight Day and night, Nightingale In the dale, Lark in sky, Merrily, Merrily, merrily, to welcome in the year. Little boy, Full of joy, Little girl, Sweet and small, Cock does crow, So do you, Merry voice, Infant noise, Merrily, merrily, to welcome in the year. Little lamb, Here I am, Come and lick My white neck, Let me pull Your soft wool, Let me kiss Your soft face, Merrily, merrily, the poem is split into three stanzas. The last line of stanza is the same to show the joy the author has for this time of year. The poem is written in dactylic feet, there are several references to other poems or characters from Blakes Songs of Innocence. For example, the introduction of this poem speaks of the flutist, the poem refers The Little Boy, from the poems The Little Boy lost and The Little Boy found. The Little Girl, who appears in several poems in Songs of Experience is mentioned, the poem also references the Lamb, from the poem The Lamb. Together Blake incorporates these characters into a happy poem welcoming Springtime, Spring is a happily written poem with a hint of rhyme. Devoted to Blakes favorite things, each describing a particular thing. The first stanza is about birds and a bush, the second a little boy and a little girl and this format shows the transition from innocence to a bit of romance, where the child and lamb become close. They share a touch and a kiss in this stanza, with only a single word change, going from to to we, representing the growth of the characters, and how they deviate from the innocent title given to them. In Songs of Innocence several of the poems seem to be linked closely together, scholars typically associate Spring with The Echoing Green due to fourth line in the first stanza To welcome the Spring
21.
Infant Joy
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Infant Joy is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was first published as part of his collection Songs of Innocence in 1789 and is the counterpart to Infant Sorrow, ralph Vaughan Williams set the poem to music in his 1958 song cycle Ten Blake Songs. The most marked pattern in ‘Infant Joy’ is the double rhyme repeated in three, six, nine, and twelve, this pattern contrasts with the more insistent rhymes found in Infant Sorrow. Thus, for Waller origins of the lie in the simplicity of domestic love through the expressions of frank sexuality. Autonomy and selfhood center the relationship of the two speakers, taking up Blakes common thematic emphasis on the nature of the self. Critic Heather Glen describes the second stanza as showing a real experience in which a childs sense of autonomous selfhood appears within a relationship of mutual joy. Vision and Disenchantment, Blake’s Songs and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, a comparison of extant copies of Blakes hand painted illustrations of Infant Joy at the William Blake Archive Infant Joy at Google Art Project
22.
A Dream (Blake)
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A Dream is a poem by English poet William Blake. The poem was first published in 1789 as part of Blakes collection of poems entitled Songs of Innocence, Songs of Innocence is a collection of 19 illustrated poems published in 1789. According to scholar Donald A. Dike, the collection does not “describe an absolute state of being or fashion an autonomous truth. ”Rather, he says the poems are resistant, being “consciously against something and trying to see their way through something. ”Songs of Innocence was followed by Blakes Songs of Experience in 1794. The two collections were published together under the title Songs of Innocence and of Experience, showing the two states of the human soul. ”Once a dream did weave a shade Oer my angel-guarded bed. Troubled, wildered, and forlorn, Dark, benighted, travel-worn, Over many a tangle spray, All heart-broke, I heard her say, do they cry, Do they hear their father sigh. Now they look abroad to see, Now return and weep for me, pitying, I dropped a tear, But I saw a glow-worm near, Who replied, What wailing wight Calls the watchman of the night. I am set to light the ground, While the beetle goes his round, Follow now the beetles hum, Little wanderer, “A Dream” is composed of five quatrains using an AABB rhyme scheme. Blake heavily relies on alliteration, assonance, internal rhymes, and eye rhymes, especially in the first and fourth stanzas, the poem describes a dream featuring four characters, the narrator, the emmet, the glow-worm, and the beetle. The dream begins with the narrator encountering the main protagonist of the dream, the worn emmet laments to the narrator about her children back home. The glow-worm, who is “set to light the ground, ” becomes the rescuer for the lost emmet, the glow-worm tells the emmet to follow the beetle, who will guide the emmet home. ”This coherence and harmony give the poem its sense of innocence. The world of this poem is portrayed as friendly and the characters are helpful, yet a hint of experience can also be felt in “A Dream” through the emmet’s fear of its surroundings and its tired, damaged appearance. The emmet has experienced hardship and separation beyond the innocence of the dream. Dike writes that, by putting the dream’s concerns into the world of an insect, harriet Kramer Linkin explores the inverted maternity plot present in A Dream. In many of the poems in Songs of Innocence, Blake portrays mothers as nurturing, however, as Linkin writes, in A Dream the inversion of a popular narrative of idealized maternity pointedly suggests that the domestic ideology is nothing more than a fantasy of Generation. Rather than a returning to his waiting wife and children. This maternity plot in A Dream follows a trend of absent mothers in other Songs of Innocence poems, according to Linkin, Blake attends to the problematic institution of a domestic ideology that restructures the middle-class family. A Comparison of Extant copies of Blakes original hand-illustrated prints of the poem at the William Blake Archive
23.
On Another's Sorrow
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On Anothers Sorrow is a poem by the English poet William Blake. The poem discusses human and divine empathy and compassion and it was published as part of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1789 as the last song in the Songs of Innocence section. Blake argues that human sympathy is a valuable trait, after making this observation about man he then speaks of the sympathy of God, as well. In his commentary on the poem, D. G. Gillham notes that though Blake discusses the nature of God, the poem is one of the few entries in Songs of Innocence and of Experience that contains an explicit declaration of innocence. It is also the poem in the volume that is in Blakes own voice. G. William Blake, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-09735-2
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1794 in poetry
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Nationality words link to articles with information on the nations poetry or literature. June – English poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey first meet, beginning in August they collaborate on the historic drama The Fall of Robespierre, published in October and Southeys first published poetry, he also writes the radical play Wat Tyler this summer. July 25 – French poet André Chénier is executed at age 31 in Paris two days before the fall of Robespierre and he had been arrested and held in the Prison Saint-Lazare before his execution. Robert Treat Paine founds the Federal Orrery, a semiweekly Federalist journal in Boston and it features contributions from Joseph Dennie and Sarah Wentworth Morton, and includes poetry, satire and criticism
25.
Introduction (Blake, 1794)
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Introduction to the Songs of Experience is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was etched and published as part of his collection Songs of Innocence, the poem is etched on a single plate and placed immediately after the title-page of the Songs of Experience. The text has not been found in any draft or manuscript version and its subject is closely connected with the poem The Voice of the Ancient Bard in the Songs of Innocence. The Voice of the Ancient Bard immediately precedes the Introduction to Songs of Experience in some copies of the Songs, in the poem, Blakes narratorial voice acts as the Ancient Bard and the Prophet, who hears Jehovah speaking to Adam in the Garden of Eden. Geoffrey Keynes says that Blake, as the prophet calls the Fallen Man to regain control of the world, Blake calls him to awake from the evil darkness and return to the realm of Imagination, reassuming the light of its previous prelapsarian state. Reason and the Sea of Time and Spece are there only till the break of day if Earth would consent to leave the slumberous mass The illustration shows a big cloud in a night sky, the text is placed on the cloud. There is a female with long hair and a halo above her head. This is probably the image of Earth addressed by the voice of the Bard, coleridge marked the poem with the symbol “H” that meant “still greater” than just “gave me pleasure”. “The last two stanzas are the words of both voices, perfectly in context when the purpose of the poem recognized. ”Kathleen Raine in her Blakes Debt to Antiquity speaks about Blake’s idea that “souls who enter the created world from beyond the galaxy become subject to the demiurge”. She says that “Blake reminds the fallen soul that she comes from eternity. Hayg Boyadjian, USA, Hear the voice of bard, rogers, UK, Sven-David Sandström, Sweden, Paul Schwartz, USA/Austria, Elie Siegmeister, USA, and Leo Smith, Canada. The poetical works of William Blake, a new and verbatim text from the engraved and letterpress originals, With variorum readings. Blake Songs of Innocence and of Experience, with an Introduction, point of View and Context in Blakes Songs. New York Public Library Bulletin 61, November 1957, 534-35, Blake set to music - a bibliography of musical settings of the poems and prose of William Blake. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford, University of California Press, a comparison of extant copies of Introduction, from the William Blake Archive. Songs of Experience - Introduction at the UGA education site
26.
Earth's Answer
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Earths Answer is a poem by William Blake within his larger collection called Songs of Innocence and of Experience. It is the response to the poem in The Songs of Experience-- Introduction. In the Introduction, the bard asks the Earth to wake up, in this poem, the feminine Earth responds. Earths Answer is composed of five stanzas, each having five lines, with the exceptions of the fourth and fifth, the stanzas follow an ABAAB rhyme scheme. In “Earth’s Answer” we see that the Earth raises her head from in “darkness dread and drear” and her hair is described as being covered with grey despair. She states that she is imprisoned on the cold watry shore which is by the father of men”. Earth then gives a series of questions, asking if Spring is budding flowers and if the sower, the final stanza shows Earth asking that the chains be broken and that she be set free. This means that the themes will generally be darker than those of the Songs of Innocence, throughout the Songs of Innocence there seems to be an attack on official religion. Since Earths Answer is a response to the Introduction to Songs of Innocence, it is important to them in context. In the Introduction, the Bard acts as a prophet in that he is reporting divine speech, the verbal parallels in the Bards speech reflect Genesis—thus suggesting that the God present in the poems is the Old Testament God. This signals to the reader that the poet intends to reflect the view of the Fall as a movement away from happiness, completeness. In “Earth’s Answer”, Blake recasts the fall in terms of a malicious God who keeps Earth imprisoned, ackland notes that when the Bard admonishes Earth to rise, it seems cruel primarily because through his failure to intervene. He is responsible for her state Earth is lowered by man, in terms of religion, this would indicate The Fall. And as Earth is to herself up and rebuild, the image of a New Eden comes to mind, a typical trope within Romantic poetry is the use of nature to reflect on experiences. The same holds true within this poem through the role of a personified Earth, both of these rely heavily on Earth. This shows that Earth represents both humankind and nature and this means that when Earth is wronged by the Father, both Nature and Humankind must suffer the injuries. For Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake used a method called illuminated printing, the illustration itself contributes and adds to the nature theme. There is a vegetation that both frames the poem and divides the stanzas
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The Clod and the Pebble
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The Clod and the Pebble is a poem from William Blakes 1794 collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience. The Clod and The Pebble is the exemplification of Blakes statement at the beginning of Songs of Innocence and it shows two contrary types of love. The poem is written in three stanzas, the first stanza is the clods view that love should be unselfish. The soft view of love is represented by this soft clod of clay, and represents the innocent state of the soul, the second stanza connects the clod and the pebble. It gives the location of the clod, pleasantly singing his view while being trodden on by a cattle, at the end of the 2nd line the shift in views is signaled by a semicolon. This shift is further emphasized with the use of the word But at the beginning of the third line, the pebble is meanwhile in the river warbling his view. The final stanza is the view of selfish love. Different kinds of love are exemplified in this poem, according to Joseph Heffner the clod singing shows his view on love, which connotes a blissful joyfulness and he believes that love should be unselfish. The pebble meanwhile has the view that love is in fact selfish. These differing views can also be seen as the difference between masculine and feminine love, the clod in this poem represents innocence. Its view of love is, according to Joseph Heffner, full of childlike innocence. The choice of a clod of clay to represent this innocent view of love is significant because it is soft, the clod also represents innocence because it is made of clay, the same material God used to mold Adam. The pebble, with its solid and hard structure represents being hardened by the experience of love, the pebble views love as something that is selfish. It also according to Joseph Heffner the use of the word bind by the pebble suggests a sort of aggressive, violent, each is solely concerned with her own survival, hardened to the suffering of the others. Comparison of hand painted extant copies of The Clod and the Pebble available from the William Blake Archive An Annotated Bibliography of interpretations of the poem
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Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)
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Holy Thursday is a poem by William Blake, first published in Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1794. This poem, unlike its companion poem in Songs of Innocence, the primary objective of this poem is to question social and moral injustice. On that day a service was held in St. Pauls Cathedral for the children of Londons charity schools. Appreciation of the guardians of the poor thus advertising their charity may not be wholly shared by Blakes Piper. In their state of innocence, children should not be regimented, rather, the children in this poem assert and preserve their essential innocence not by going to church, but by freely and spontaneously, like a mighty wind, raising to heaven the voice of song. With his Holy Thursday of the Songs of Experience, Blakes Bard clarifies his view of the hypocrisy of formal religion and its claimed acts of charity. He sees the established churchs hymns as a sham, suggesting in his second stanza that the sound which would represent the day more accurately would be the trembling cry of a poor child. The biblical connotations of the opening point us towards Blakes assertion that a country whose children live in want cannot be described as truly rich. With the apparent contradiction of two climatic opposites existing simultaneously within the one unit, we are offered a metaphor for Englands man-made two nations. Blake wrote during the revolution, whose pioneers congratulated themselves upon their vigorous increases in output. The poet argues that until increases in production are linked to more equitable distribution, is this a holy thing to seeIn a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand. Is that trembling cry a song, can it be a song of joy. And so many children poor. It is a land of poverty. And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak and bare, And their ways are filled with thorns, for whereer the sun does shine, And whereer the rain does fall, Babes should never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall. A Comparison of Blakes hand illustrated copies of Holy Thursday at the William Blake Archive
29.
The Little Girl Lost
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The Little Girl Lost is a 1794 poem published by William Blake in his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience. According to Lindop, the poem starts out with a prophecy from Blake during the first two stanzas and this prophecy is telling readers that our imperfect world will one day be redeemed and renewed by the God who created it. This is not a warning of a second-coming or judgement day, according to scholar, Thomas Connolly, the Earth will awake to see her maker and this will bring out an Edenic regeneration. Following the prophecy, the narrative begins. Lyca, the girl in the poem wanders out into the wilderness. Her parents are very distressed about their lost daughter, the poem ends following the animals taking Lyca off to the caves. The narrative in this poem continues in The Little Girl Found, the Little Girl Lost is a thirteen-stanza poem, has 52 lines, and follows an AABB rhyme scheme. In futurity I prophetic see That the earth from sleep Shall arise and seek For her Maker meek, in the southern clime, Where the summer’s prime Never fades away, Lovely Lyca lay. Seven summers old Lovely Lyca told, She had wander’d long Hearing wild birds’ song, ‘Sweet sleep, come to me Underneath this tree. ‘Lost in desert wild Is your little child, how can Lyca sleep If her mother weep. ‘If her heart does ache Then let Lyca wake, If my mother sleep, Lyca shall not weep. ‘Frowning, frowning night, O’er this desert bright, Let thy moon arise While I close my eyes. ’ Sleeping Lyca lay While the beasts of prey, Come from caverns deep, View’d the maid asleep. The kingly lion stood, And the virgin view’d, Then he gamboll’d round O’er the hallow’d ground, the plate for The Little Girl Lost features a couple embracing in a kiss with the womans arm reaching upward. There is also a presence of nature with birds flying and branches hanging above the couple, a vine with a snake breaks up the first two stanzas from the rest of the poem. According to the scholars, Rodney Baine and Mary Baine, the embracing lovers featured on the poems plate helps to suggest that Lyca journeys into the sexuality of adulthood, of experience. Throughout Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experience and as stated in the title. According to Connolly, this transition is a sexual one, an important part to this interpretation is the question of how old Lyca really is. Connolly points out lines 13-14 in reference to Lycas age, Seven summers old/ Lovely Lyca told, Connolly brings to our attention that while it could simply mean that Lyca is seven, it could also mean seven summers have passed since she hit puberty
30.
The Little Girl Found
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The Little Girl Found is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794, in the poem, the parents of a seven-year-old girl, called Lyca, are looking desperately for their young daughter who is lost in the desert. During days and nights go on looking for the girl up to the moment they find a lion which tells them where the child lies. Blake uses this to demonstrate that positive change away from experience is possible
31.
The Sick Rose
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The Sick Rose is a poem by William Blake. The first publication was in 1794, when it was included in his collection titled Songs of Experience as the 39th plate, the incipit of the poem is O Rose thou art sick. Blake composed the page sometime after 1789, and presents it with the illuminated border, most aspects of the original production were undertaken by the author, the composition of the poem and design, engraving, and promotion of the work. The printing was usually done by Blakes wife, Catherine, as well as any colouring not performed by Blake himself, the text has been republished in typeset many times, with slight variations, and is usually included in collections of the authors work. As with many of Blakes songs, such as The Tyger, nevertheless, the lesson of the worm may be applicable to human experience. The scansion is difficult to place, due to a lack of pattern, the stanzas are asymmetrical, the first has syllables of 5,6,5,5, and the second of 5,4,6,5. Punctuation is also irregular, there is no after O Rose, the poem was set to music by Benjamin Britten in his 1943 Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, where it forms the movement Elegy. More recently, British rock band Amplifier set the poem to music on their 2011 album The Octopus, verses of the poem also comprise and inspire the 1991 song Loves Secret Domain by the band Coil. Works related to The Sick Rose at Wikisource
32.
The Fly (poem)
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The Fly is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794 and it was set to music in 1965 by Benjamin Britten as part of his song cycle Songs and Proverbs of William Blake. Esperanza Spalding recorded this poem on her 2010 album Chamber Music Society, little Fly Thy summers play, My thoughtless hand Has brushd away. Am not I A fly like thee, or art not thou A man like me. For I dance And drink & sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing, If thought is life And strength & breath, And the want Of thought is death, Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die. Blake printed the poem with the set in the branches of trees, an image of a nurse and a toddler in the foreground. G. S. Morris notes that the lines Till some blind hand / Shall brush my wing seem to follow the feathered shuttlecock directly into the little girls racquet. The poem catches the narrator in an act of thoughtlessness that leads to the contemplation of the act, the fly suffers from uncontrollable circumstances, just as the narrator does. William Blake, The Complete Poems, edited Alicia Ostriker, Harmondsworth, a comparison of extant copies of The Fly, from the William Blake Archive. Esperanza Spaldings presentation of the poem The Fly, Music composition by Dmitri N. Smirnov
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The Tyger
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The Tyger is a poem by the English poet William Blake published in 1794 as part of the Songs of Experience collection. Literary critic Alfred Kazin calls it the most famous of his poems and it is one of Blakes most reinterpreted and arranged works. The Songs of Experience was published in 1794 as a follow up to Blakes 1789 Songs of Innocence. The two books were published together under the merged title Songs of Innocence and Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, the illustrations are arranged differently in some copies, while a number of poems were moved from Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience. Blake continued to print the work throughout his life, of the copies of the original collection, only 28 published during his life are known to exist, with an additional 16 published posthumously. Only 5 of the poems from Songs of Experience appeared individually before 1839, the first and last stanzas are identical except the word could becomes dare in the second iteration. Kazin says to begin to wonder about the tiger, and its nature, Blake achieves great power through the use of alliteration combined with imagery, and he structures the poem to ring with incessant repetitive questioning, demanding of the creature, Who made thee. In the third stanza the focus moves from the tiger, the creation, the Tyger is six stanzas in length, each stanza four lines long. Much of the poem follows the pattern of its first line. A number of lines, however, such as four in the first stanza. The first stanza opens the question, What immortal hand or eye. Here the direct address to the creature becomes most obvious, but certainly, the second stanza questions the Tyger about where he was created, the third about how the creator formed him, the fourth about what tools were used. In the fifth stanza, Blake wonders how the creator reacted to the Tyger, finally, the sixth restates the central question while raising the stakes, rather than merely question what/who could create the Tyger, the speaker wonders, who dares. The Tyger is the poem to The Lamb, a reflection of similar ideas from a different perspective. The Songs of Experience were written as a contrary to the Songs of Innocence – a central tenet in Blakes philosophy, and central theme in his work. The struggle of humanity is based on the concept of the nature of things, Blake believed. Experience is not the face of evil but rather another facet of that created us. Kazin says of Blake, Never is he more heretical than, where he glories in the hammer and fire out of which are struck
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My Pretty Rose Tree
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My Pretty Rose Tree is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794, a flower was offered to me, Such a flower as May never bore, But I said, ‘I’ve a pretty rose tree, ’ And I passed the sweet flower o’er. Then I went to my pretty rose tree, To tend her by day and by night, But my rose turned away with jealousy, And her thorns were my only delight. A man is offered a flower far surpassing the beauty of an ordinary flower and he then returns to his tree and tends to her every need both day and night, but she only turns away from him in jealousy and shows him the thorns of her own. According to Antal, Blakes Flower Plate is composed of three poems on the same plate for a reason, to illustrate three types of love, Poetic Love, Earthly Love, and Human Love. In the threefold vision of love idea, this poem represents Human Love and this is considered to be Human Love due to the possessiveness and temptation echoed throughout the poem. This poem seems to echo that of a story of a married couple, the man is surrounded by beauty, and at least one beautiful woman, but he declines them all to return to his wife. He is very possessive with his constant use of the word my and she, however, turns away with jealousy and in turn only reveals her thorns to him. Johnson describes My Pretty Rose Tree as. an ironic reconsideration of the emblem convention and his love object. both attracts and repels. In this, the man in the poem is trying to show his love to his rose tree and this echoes the idea of Human Love as we often want things we cant have, and become infatuated with things, or idealizing them instead of actually loving them. The rose tree showing her thorns of jealousy only entices the man more, one theme continuously echoes through the minds of critics, Possessiveness. Antal states that The man actually imprisons his partner who reacts accordingly - to ownership with distrust, Antal also goes further to mention the frequent use of the word my in the poem, especially when in reference to rose tree. The man lays claim over the tree, and though he tends to her every need, seems to get nothing but contempt. Durant furthers the point of possessiveness when he says, The keyword is Ive, what he affirms is not that he is hers, but that she is his. He is not thinking of his responsibility to her, but of his rights over her and this interpretation makes it sound as if the man is expecting the woman to bear him children. In a time where women were considered mens property anyway, not only would the woman be possessed by her husband, if the rose tree, or rather the woman, fears that her husband is unfaithful to her, she wouldnt want to trap her children within that environment. Labour of Love—Ovidian Flower-Figures in William Blakes Songs, eger Journal of English Studies, 23-40. Durant, G. H. Blakes My Pretty Rose Tree--An Interpretation, theoria, A Jouranl of Social and Political Theory, 33-37
35.
Ah! Sun-flower
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Sun-flower is an illustrated poem written by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794 and it is one of only four poems in Songs of Experience not found in the Notebook. Weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun, where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow, Arise from their graves and aspire, Where my Sun-flower wishes to go. The poem consists of eight lines, in two quatrains, the metre is largely one of anapaestic trimeter with an admix of initial iambs and trochees to break up the rather monotonous rhythm that the anapaestic line confers. Thus Blake is able to show the monotony that the protagonists are suffering, while at the same time giving a forward note of impetus. The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, all the rhymes are masculine, the ambiguous use of the word Ah, and the repetition of the word where are noteworthy - these are discussed by Grant, the disturbance of the anapaestic rhythm in line three by Edwards. The speaker begins with a sigh that suggests the same weariness that he attributes to the Sunflower, the wistful tone and the implied sympathy for the time-bound victims are disarming. But, as critics have noted, the poem is not without irony. the sense of timeless rest is soon complicated by the ambiguous syntax. Indeed, Bloom goes so far as to say that the tone can be characterized as a kind of apocalyptic sardonicism. The printmaking technique used for the page is relief etching, with pen and watercolour. The dimensions of the impression, including all three poems, are,14 cm x 9.4 cm. The Ah, Sun-flower design forms the part of the overall layout. The text and title appear in a cloud, Grant discusses the illustration in some detail. Leader points to the distance between the Sunflower and the blue space as being illustrative of unfulfilled aspiration. There are many interpretations of this slight, but well-known, poem and artwork. Grant gives the most comprehensive overview of the poem, northrop Frye believed that the merging of imagination and time is the axis on which all Blakes thought turns. Ah. Sun-flower seems to be an example of this dialectic, as the responses of critics outlined below show. Another key to Blakes thought mentioned by Frye is that for Blake. the fall of man, the world we see and live in is therefore a fallen natural world in which, since God is Man, humans are miserable in the state of nature
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The Lilly
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The Lilly is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794, the modest Rose puts forth a thorn, The humble sheep a threat’ning horn, While the Lily white shall in love delight, Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright. The Rose, which is a symbol of love and beauty, the humble sheep also calls to attention its horn or flaw. The Lilly, however, which is pure and white, enjoys love and has no thorn or flaw to show the world. According to Antal, Blakes Flower Plate is composed of three poems on the same plate for a reason, to illustrate three types of love, Poetic Love, Earthly Love, and Human Love. The Lilly deals with the Poetic Love concept of this vision of love. This is considered the Poetic Love because the Lilly is innocent, and pure, as Johsnon states, Oddly enough, most emblem designs featuring lilies show the flower surrounded by thorns. Unlike the sheep or the Rose, the Lilly is the purest of them all and this echoes poetic love as ideally, love should be flawless. Love should be perfect and everything that people dream of, even though the two lovers themselves may have flaws, love itself shouldnt have any. Though a rather short poem, and for that matter, the shortest poem on the page, The Lilly puts forth a great deal of symbolism, though there are many different interpretations out there, the experts seem to agree on two main themes for this poem. The two main themes within this poem are Purity and the Ideal Love, though Purity is often immediately compared with virginity, some critics argue that The Lilly maintains a rather different kind of purity. Johnson quotes, The text and design of The Lilly emblematize and celebrate a fresh conception of purity, to be unstained by thorns is to allow the stain of personal contact, which is the only true whiteness. This purity is not virginity, rather, this purity is knowing what you want and you dont alter your desires or ambition despite the circumstances, but keep true to what you truly desire. The idea of Purity in the poem also trickles into the theme of Ideal Love. The Ideal Love is often the purest form of love in that the love is pure because it is love, there is no game. The Ideal Love is simply love, purely innocent and true love, johnson states that The Lilly who delights in love is another manifestation of the sweet flower offered to the Rose lover in the first poem on his plate. Labour of Love—Ovidian Flower-Figures in William Blakes Songs, eger Journal of English Studies, 23-40. Durant, G. H. Blakes My Pretty Rose Tree--An Interpretation, theoria, A Jouranl of Social and Political Theory, 33-37
37.
The Little Vagabond
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The Little Vagabond is a 1794 poem by William Blake in his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience. His collection, Songs of Innocence was originally published alone, in 1789, the scholar, Robert Gleckner says that the poem is a form of transformation of the boy in the poem The School Boy, from Songs of Innocence. The poem tells the opinion of the boy who believes that people would choose to go to church if there were alcoholic beverages. This is because he sees how happy those in the alehouse are, therefore he believes church should have a similar atmosphere, also, that it would not be sinful to make the church similar to the alcohol-serving establishment because God wants to see his children happy. This poem has four stanzas of four lines each and it has an AABC rhyme scheme in the first stanza, but an AABB rhyme scheme in the last three. Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold, But the Alehouse is healthy, and pleasant, besides, I can tell where I am used well, Such usage in heaven will never do well. But, if at the Church they would give us some ale, And a pleasant fire our souls to regale, We’d sing and we’d pray all the livelong day, Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray. Then the Parson might preach, and drink, and sing, And we’d be as happy as birds in the spring, And modest Dame Lurch, who is always at church, Would not have bandy children, nor fasting, nor birch. And God, like a father, rejoicing to see His children as pleasant and happy as He, Would have no quarrel with the Devil or the barrel, But kiss him. The top of this displays a larger man, possibly God, laying over. The lower section shows a group of people of different sizes hugging, possibly parents and children, the two halves of Songs of Innocence and Experience differ in more ways than the writing alone. The imagery on the plates differ as well, the rays of light over the larger man were considered a remarkable section of the plate, as Blake did not often add halos or anything similar over the heads of those in his plates in the past. The repression of childrens points of view in terms of church, another motivating factor is how different people view God in different ways. Scholar, Galia Benziman proposes that the child narrarating could be interpreted as both hypocritical and deceptive, considering his hateful view of the church, and with the whites of his eyes upraised at the audacity of this poem. Anything rather than this degradation I of Humanity, and therein of the Incarnate Divinity, the poem has been used in a musical format in multiple instances
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London (William Blake poem)
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London is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Experience in 1794. It is one of the few poems in Songs of Experience that does not have a poem in Songs of Innocence. The use of the word Chartered is ambiguous and goes against control and it may express the political and economic control that Blake considered London to be enduring at the time of his writing. Blakes friend Thomas Paine had criticised the granting of Royal Charters to control trade as a form of class oppression, however, chartered could also mean freighted and may refer to the busy or overburdened streets and river or to the licensed trade carried on within them. In the original draft, the word used was simply dirty, ralph Vaughan Williams set the poem to music in his 1958 song cycle Ten Blake Songs. The poem was set to music in 1965 by Benjamin Britten as part of his song cycle Songs, the poet William Blake was a poet and artist who specialised in illuminated texts, often of a religious nature. He rejected established religion for various reasons, including the failure of the established Church to help children in London who were forced to work, Blake lived and worked in the capital, so he was arguably well placed to write clearly about the conditions people who lived there faced. Songs of Innocence and of Experience Published in 1794, this collection of poems, fully illustrated and originally hand-printed by Blake, the Songs of Innocence section contains poems which are positive in tone and celebrate love, childhood and nature. The Songs of Experience poems are intended to provide a contrast. Dangerous industrial conditions, child labour, prostitution and poverty are just some of the topics Blake explores, the French Revolution In 1789, the French people revolted against the monarchy and aristocracy, using violence and murder to overthrow those in power. Many saw the French Revolution as inspirational - a model for how ordinary, Blake alludes to the revolution in London, arguably suggesting that the experience of living there could encourage a revolution on the streets of the capital. A Comparison of the original hand-painted copies of London available from the William Blake Archive William Blakes London by Lethargica
39.
The Human Abstract (poem)
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The Human Abstract is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794, the poem was originally drafted in Blakes notebook and was later revised for as part of publication in Songs of Experience. Critics of the poem have noted it as demonstrative of Blakes metaphysical poetry, the title The Human Abstract appeared first in the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. In the commentary to his publication of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, D. G. Rossetti described this poem as one of very perfect, the illustration shows a gowned old man with a long beard who kneels with his legs outspread. He raises his arms to grip the ropes as if he tries to free himself, there is a tree trunk with a broad base on the right and the edge of another on the left. The colour of the sky suggests sunrise or sunset, a muddy river runs along the lower edge of the design in front of the man. The previous title of the poem The Human Image shows clearly that it is a counterpart to The Divine Image in the Songs of Innocence, there is a great difference between two worlds, of Innocence and of Experience. In The Divine Image of Innocence Blake establishes four great virtues, mercy, pity, peace, and love and these four virtues represent God as well as a Man, However, as Robert F. Experience, then, is fundamentally hypocritical and acquisitive, rational and non-imaginative. In such a world virtue cannot exist except as a rationally conceived opposite to vice. ”Blake made two attempts to create a counterpart poem to The Divine Image of Innocence. The poems discursiveness, its mechanical, almost mathematical simplicity make it unlike other songs of experience. Another poem dealing with the same subject I heard an Angel singing, exists only in draft version and appeared as the eighth entry of Blakes Notebook, p.114, reversed, seven pages and about twenty poems before The Human Image. Blakes intention in The Human Abstract then was to analyze the perversion while making it clear at the time that imaginatively it was a perversion. In A Divine Image he had simply done the former, the second line If we did not make somebody poor in the first version was written above the struck-through line If there was nobody poor. For example, A very similar description of the growth of the Tree is found in Ahania, chap, iii, thus condensed by SwinburneEssay), david A. Axelrod, USA, The human abstract. No.6 from Songs of Experience, for orchestra, rec. Capitol stereo SKAO-338 Timoty Lenk, USA, The human abstract. No.12 from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, for tenor and bass soli, flute, clarinet and violin,1977 Gerard Victory, Ireland, life of William Blake, Volume 2. CS1 maint, Uses editors parameter A. C, William Blake, a critical essay,1868. Gleckner, Robert F. William Blake and the Human Abstract, the poetical works of William Blake, a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals, With variorum readings and bibliographical notes and prefaces
40.
Infant Sorrow
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Infant Sorrow is a poem by William Blake from Songs of Experience. This poem belongs to the Songs of Experience by William Blake and it is the counter poem of Infant Joy. The poem suggests that childbirth is not always joyful and happy but can bring sorrow, the response of the child itself may be different from that of the child in Infant Joy because of the behavior of the parents. In this poem the parents seem depressed by this unwanted birth, and this poem could be considered as a work of societal allusion. It is well known that William Blake was strongly opposed to the revolution, similarly. When the infant is being brought helpless and naked to the dangerous world, Blake utilizes this as a symbol of temporary security. While the child is young, he/she will be nurtured and protected by their parents, but once the child matures, they will find a life devoid of any joy or pleasure, such as working in the factories with no security. The child decides to sulk upon the breast of the childs mother and this poem is powerful in the sense that it outlines the sometimes desperate, sorrowful situation facing children as they grow. Into the dangerous world I leapt, Helpless, naked, piping loud, struggling in my fathers hands, Striving against my swaddling bands, Bound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mothers breast
41.
A Poison Tree
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A Poison Tree is a poem written by William Blake, published in 1794 as part of his Songs of Experience collection. It describes the narrators repressed feelings of anger towards an individual, the poem explores themes of indignation, revenge, and more generally the fallen state of mankind. The Songs of Experience was published in 1794 as a follow up to Blakes 1789 Songs of Innocence. The two books were published together under the merged title Songs of Innocence and Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, the illustrations are arranged differently in some copies, while a number of poems were moved from Songs of Innocence to Songs of Experience. Blake continued to print the work throughout his life, of the copies of the original collection, only 28 published during his life are known to exist, with an additional 16 published posthumously. Only 5 of the poems from Songs of Experience appeared individually before 1839 with A Poison Tree first published in the 1830 London University Magazine. The original title of the poem is Christian Forbearance, and was placed as number 10 in the Rossetti manuscript, the body was shown in a similar manner to the crucified corpse of Blakes A Negro on the Rack in John Gabriel Stedmans Narrative. The poem relies on a trochaic beat and it consists of four stanzas, and begins with an emphasis on the first person. The first person perspective changes with the use of the word And after the first stanza, the original draft has a line drawn beneath the first stanza, which could denote that Blake originally intended the poem as concluding at the 4th line. There are also differences between the manuscript and published versions of the poem, with the original line 3 and 4 reading At a Friends Errors Anger Shew / Mirth at the Errors of a Foe. The poem suggests that acting on anger reduces the need for vengeance, the revolutionary forces were commonly connected to the expression of anger with opposing sides arguing that the anger was either a motivating rationale or simply blinded an individual to reason. Blake, like Coleridge, believed that anger needed to be expressed, poisoning appears in many of Blakes poems. The poisoner of A Poison Tree is similar to Blakes Jehovah, Urizen, Satan, through poisoning an individual, the victim ingests part of the poisoner, as food, through reading, or other actions, as an inversion on the Eucharist. Through ingestion, the sense of reason of the poisoner is forced onto the poisoned. Thus, the death of the poisoned can be interpreted as a replacement of the poisoneds individuality, the world of the poem is one where dominance is key, and there is no reciprocal interaction between individuals because of a lack of trust. The poem, like others in Songs of Experience, reflects a uniquely Christian sense of alienation, Blakes poem differs from Swedenborgs theory by containing an uncontrollable progression through actions that lead to the conclusion. The final murder is beyond the control of the narrator, the poems theme of duplicity and the inevitable conclusion is similar to the anonymous poem There was a man of double deed. The image of the tree appears in many of Blakes poems and it is possible to read the narrator as a divine figure who uses the tree to seduce mankind into disgrace
42.
A Little Boy Lost
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A Little Boy Lost is a poem of the Songs of Experience series created in 1794 after the Songs of Innocence by the poet William Blake. The poem focuses on the theme of persecution, and the corrupt results of dogmatic Church teachings. As part of Songs of Experience, the poem has the context of exploring the suffering of innocent individuals, in this case a young boy. The priest, embodying these Church teachings, hears the boys questioning of doctrine, as the poem progresses, the father and family weep for the boy. When the poem was first published, critics thought it to be difficult, what makes the poem confusing is that the boy himself is baffled. A commentator thought the boy was trying to compare the divine of man to God, the poems title hints at the focus, even symbolically. Blake wanted his poems to be written for the common man and this poem is split up into six quatrains and all are in iambic tetrameter. The first two quatrains are about the little boy speaking of love and what he thinks religion should be, the next quatrain is about the priest hearing the boy question God and his faith and then makes the boy a tyrant to show the public his treason. As the poem moves the boys innocence dissipates, when you look at the photo above you can see there are two numbers one on the inside of the outline and one on the outside. The first number is the sequence of the songs of innocence and then the outer is the songs of Experience
Songs of Innocence and of Experience public domain audiobook at LibriVox