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3.1.1 Songs of Innocence
W(caps)illiam Blake invokes the innocence of a child he ran into while “piping down the valley’s wild.” Apparently moved by the poet’s tune, the child requests that the poet composes a rhyme about a lamb, to which Blake agreed cheerfully. The poet’s song, it appears, moved the boy into tears. The poet’s emphasis here is the achievement of the powerful “force of emotional feeling that is contained in poetry.” “… he wept to hear” “wept with joy to hear.” In selfless curiosity and desire to share with others the limitless aesthetics of the rhyme, he insists that the piper sits down and write his songs for other members of his generation to share from the wisdom that is contained in poetry. He adhered to the boy’s suggestion that poetry be expanded from restricted or private theme to the universal. Our poet suggests a need to change from the complex, unmusical, and esoteric verse style he inherited from the classical tradition of poetry to a more socially engaging, simple, and familiar poetry with new themes. The poem states:
Piper, sit dee down and write
In a book that all may read…
And I plucked a hollow reed
And I made a rural pen,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
In continuation of the theme of innocence in Blake’s Songs of Innocence, the poet takes a cursory look into the ‘valley’s wild,” and the quiet hills and valleys. A child approaches, instructs him to sing a song to him about a lamb, child falls deeper into a state of innocence by weeping. And in between his emotional expression, the child requests our poet never to stop his happiness giving songs, as it will enable the inhabitants of rural England enjoy the beauty of his craft. Blake obeys:
… And I made a rural pen.
And I stained the mater clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
The shepherd
Our poet suggests a need to change from the complex, unmusical, and esoteric verse inherited from the classical tradition of poetry to a more socially acceptable, familiar, simple poetry in new or current themes.
3.1.2 The Little Black Boy
This poem of William Blake’s commemorates the passing of a Bill proposed in the House of Commons on 21st May 1788 by Sir William Dolben which restricted the number of slaves who could be transported from Africa to British colonies in the West Indies.
The little black boy in the poem is a slave who tells his life history in simple and moving language after realizing his shattered life in his new world. He explains that he was born in the Southern world “wild.” He admits that he is black but his “soul is now white” by his allegiance and new cosmopolitan English cultural setting. He experiences color differentiation between black and white. He reports the color discrimination he encountered in the following lines:
My mother bore me in the Southern wild
And I am black, but o! my soul is white
White as an angel is the English child
But I am black as if bereaved of light.
3.1.3 The Young Black Slave
The young black slave explains the psychological and emotional torture his severance from his native land has caused him. As a black boy, he feels constrained to learn white culture, and he notices the honor bestowed upon the white child and how he is isolated, treated as underdog, “as if bereaved of light.” He recounts emotional and physical torture “wet with dew” and his night weeping. He cried every night until God appeared to him at night in “white” apparel, kissed and led him by the hand, just as his sorrowful mother appeared to console him. While his mother consoles him, she instructs him to direct his thoughts, ill-feelings, to God, who will bear his troubles, brighten his days and comfort him, “…gives his light and gives his heat away” the same way, “flowers,” “trees,” “beasts,” receive comfort in the morning and joy in the noonday. She teaches her boy that the true love that eludes him can be given by the Almighty God who gives joy and care to all without discrimination. She comforts the boy further, explaining the rationale behind the color bar. She advises that such discrimination should be seen as God’s natural way of shielding the black man’s soul, “a cloud like a shady grove.” She tells him that “the cloud will vanish” and the good God will receive the oppressed in his open arms warmly, with his superior love and care “like lambs rejoice.” After she had consoled him, his soul unites black and white who were thought to emanate from different worlds.
The overriding sense of joy, unity, and oneness will then take over the racial prejudice that had once defined separately the black and white worlds:
To learn in joy upon our father’s knee;
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.
3.1.4 To See a World in a Grain of Sand
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
In this quatrain of Blake, we see the theme of the temporal nature of our world. This is compared with the beauty and eternal presence of heaven and heavenly bodies. Other themes are: theme of permanence, the transience nature of the human world with her vanishing possibilities, theme of heaven. Heaven, though seems far, yet the poet believes is so near to us. The first line of Blake’s quatrain is apocalyptical; it reminds one of the ruinous end of the world, as predicted in the Biblical book of Revelation.
Blake’s style in the short poem is loaded with metaphor which appears in every line. Our temporal world is compared to a grain of sand that could vanish in a moment when it encounters a passing wind. In the poem, the earth is placed in contrast with heaven and heavenly bodies of lasting qualities and affects.
3.1.5 Holy Thursday
During a Thursday declared holy by St. Paul in England, children appeared in pairs, wearing colorful attire that symbolizes holiness and purity. Some colors of their dresses are: “red,” “blue,” and “green,” with “white” wands as “snow.” The free movement of the many children to the dome of St. Paul is compared to the free flow of the River Thames, just as the beauty formed by the color combination of the innocent children, the radiance, and flowery appearances are also compared to the “multitudes of lambs.” The thunderous songs of the numerous boys and girls, the harmony of thought and voices are compared to those of heavenly Angels.
3.1.6 The Garden of Love
The poet refers to a chapel that was built in South Lambeth Green in 1793. Every member was charged to pay for their places, thus revealing the irony of the poem. In place of the green where the poet used to play as a boy now stands a building for worship where man’s inhumanity and wickedness abound. The poet is disappointed that in the garden of love are many graves and tombstones; the priests in black gown walk tirelessly making proclamations in the garden. Blake sees this sad development as the implication of people’s sinful act. The poet observes:
And I saw it was filled with graves
And tombstones where flowers should be
The priests in black gowns were walking their rounds
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
3.1.7 London
In what looks like the poet’s actual experience, he wandered through the mapped streets of London owned by corporations around the Thames. His face misty with unshed tears: agony, depression, as he ran on the streets of London:
I wonder through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man
In every infant’s cry of fear
In every voice, in every ban
The mind forged manacles I hear.
In the poem, London’s hardships spread into the church and “the chimney sweeper’s cry”. The social and economic problems in London of the poet’s age had an overpowering influence on young English women, many of whom were reduced to harlots in the midnight streets of London with their “howling babies”. The effect of the biting social economic problems in London affects a great number of the populace such that the poet described it as a plague:
But most through midnight streets
I hear how the youthful harlots curse
Blasts the newborn infant’s lear
And blasts with plagues the marriage hearse
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