William Blake poems

Songs of Innocence and Experience

MOTTO TO THE SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

The Good are attracted by Men's Perceptions

And Think not for themselves

Till Experience teaches them to catch

And to cage the Fairies and Elves

And the Knave begins to snarl

And the Hypocrite to Howl

And all his good Friends shew their private ends

And the Eagle is known from the Owl.

THE BLOSSOM

Merry, merry sparrow!

Under leaves so green

A happy blossom

Sees you, swift as arrow,

Seek your cradle narrow,

Near my bosom.

Pretty, pretty robin!

Under leaves so green

A happy blossom

Hears you sobbing, sobbing,

Pretty, pretty robin,

Near my bosom.

Songs of Innocence

Songs of Innocence:

INFANT JOY

'I have no name;

I am but two days old.'

What shall I call thee?

'I happy am,

Joy is my name.'

Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!

Sweet joy, but two days old.

Sweet joy I call thee:

Thou dost smile,

I sing the while;

Sweet joy befall thee! 

Songs of Innocence:

HOLY THURSDAY

'Twas on a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,

The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green:

Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,

Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow.

O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!

Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own.

The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,

Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,

Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among:

Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor.

Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

Questions:

1. How do you know that the "innocent faces" are those of chimney sweepers?

2. Who are the "wise guardians of the poor"?

3. Why should we "cherish pity"?

4. How does the poem suggest that these men are devils and not angels and thus mock its own sincerity?

Songs of Innocence:

The Echoing Green 

The sun does arise,

And make happy the skies;

The merry bells ring

To welcome the Spring;

The skylark and thrush,

The birds of the bush,

Sing louder around

To the bells' cheerful sound;

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 and boys -

In our youth-time were seen

On the echoing green.'

Till the little ones, weary,

No more can be merry:

The sun does descend,

And our sports have an end.

Round the laps of their mothers

Many sisters and brothers,

Like birds in their nest,

Are ready for rest,

And sport no more seen

On the darkening green.

Questions:

1. Is this an idyllic vision of innocence, purity, and love?

2. How is it important that the poem rises and sets in this poem and the "play" ends?

3. Why juxtapose the young and the elderly?

The Lamb

Little Lamb who made thee 

         Dost thou know who made thee 

Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 

By the stream & o'er the mead;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing wooly bright;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice! 

         Little Lamb who made thee 

         Dost thou know who made thee 

         Little Lamb I'll tell thee,

         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!

He is called by thy name,

For he calls himself a Lamb: 

He is meek & he is mild, 

He became a little child: 

I a child & thou a lamb, 

We are called by his name.

         Little Lamb God bless thee. 

         Little Lamb God bless thee.

Songs of Innocence:

THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER

When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue

Could scarcely cry 'Weep! weep! weep! weep!'

So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,

That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,

'Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare,

You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.'

And so he was quiet, and that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! -

That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,

Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

And by came an angel, who had a bright key,

And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;

Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run

And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,

They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind:

And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,

He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,

And got with our bags and our brushes to work.

Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:

So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

Questions:

1. How do you know that the child is sold into commercial bondage by the father with the approval of the Church?

2. What do the sordid chimneys become in the poem? How is this critical of the loss of self in an industrial world?

3. Why is the city contrasted with "a green plain"?

4. Why is Tom Dacre happy and warm in the cold?

5. How does this poem implode and mock its own sincerity?

THE DIVINE IMAGE

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,

   All pray in their distress,

And to these virtues of delight

   Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,

   Is God our Father dear;

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,

   Is man, His child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart;

   Pity, a human face;

And Love, the human form divine:

   And Peace the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,

   That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine:

   Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,

   In heathen, Turk, or Jew.

Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell,

   There God is dwelling too.

Questions:

1. How are Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love able to achieve Pope's balance of the human mind?

2. Why must we love the human form, the turk, the jew?

3. How does this poem mock its own sincerity?

To the Evening Star

by William Blake

Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,

Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light

Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown

Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!

Smile on our loves; and, while thou drawest the

Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew

On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes

In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on

The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,

And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon, 

Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,

And the lion glares through the dun forest.

The fleeces of our flocks are covered with

Thy sacred dew; protect them with thine influence.

"To the Evening Star" by William Blake, from Selected Poems. © Oxford University Press, 1996. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

William Blake (1757-1827)

Songs of Experience

INFANT SORROW

My mother groaned, my father wept:

Into the dangerous world I leapt,

Helpless, naked, piping loud,

Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my father's hands,

Striving against my swaddling bands,

Bound and weary, I thought best

To sulk upon my mother's breast.

Questions:

1. Obviously a companion poem to "Infant Joy," how does this poem show the negative side of being born?

2. Since we know Satan entered into Eden first as a mist, "hidden in a cloud," what does this poem say about the origin of evil in this "fiend" of a baby?

3. How does the baby express his despair?

The Tyger

              1Tyger! Tyger! burning bright 

              2In the forests of the night, 

              3What immortal hand or eye 

              4Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

              5In what distant deeps or skies 

              6Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 

              7On what wings dare he aspire? 

              8What the hand dare seize the fire?

              9And what shoulder, and what art, 

            10Could twist the sinews of thy heart, 

            11And when thy heart began to beat, 

            12What dread hand? and what dread feet?

            13What the hammer? what the chain? 

            14In what furnace was thy brain? 

            15What the anvil? what dread grasp 

            16Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

            17When the stars threw down their spears, 

            18And water'd heaven with their tears, 

            19Did he smile his work to see? 

            20Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

            21Tyger! Tyger! burning bright 

            22In the forests of the night, 

            23What immortal hand or eye, 

            24Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Questions:

1. How does this poem question the imbalance of God's world toward destruction, evil, death?

2. Could the tiger serve a purpose and the lamb serve a purpose unknown to man?

3. How does Blake express his fear of the industrial revolution?

4. How does the "fearful symmetry" in the tiger dominate the innocence in the lamb?

THE GARDEN OF LOVE

I laid me down upon a bank, 

   Where Love lay sleeping; 

I heard among the rushes dank 

   Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild, 

   To the thistles and thorns of the waste; 

And they told me how they were beguiled, 

   Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,

   And saw what I never had seen;

A Chapel was built in the midst,

   Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

   And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;

So I turned to the Garden of Love

   That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,

   And tombstones where flowers should be;

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

   And binding with briars my joys and desires.

Questions:

1. What has supplanted the garden?

2. What is also lost beyond nature?

3. Why does the speaker fear "Thou shalt not" and why does he juxtapose it to his once innocent state in nature?

4. Is Blake advocating the reader to explore "joys and desires" even if they violate the 10 Commandments?

THE SICK ROSE

O rose, thou art sick!

    The invisible worm,

That flies in the night,

    In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

    Of crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

    Does thy life destroy. 

Songs of Experience:

THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER

A little black thing among the snow,

Crying! 'weep! weep!' in notes of woe!

'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 winter's snow,

They clothed me in the clothes of death,

And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

'And because I am happy and dance and sing,

They think they have done me no injury,

And are gone to praise God and His priest and king,

Who made up a heaven of our misery.'

Questions:

1. According to the chimney sweep boy, why did they dress the boy in "clothes of death"?

2, Why do the parents want their child to be miserable? (Why does God want us to be miserable?)

3. How is Heaven "made up" and what is Heaven;s connection to our Misery?

4. How is this poem critical of strict religion?

Songs of Experience:

THE HUMAN ABSTRACT

Pity would be no more

If we did not make somebody poor,

And Mercy no more could be

If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings Peace,

Till the selfish loves increase;

Then Cruelty knits a snare,

And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,

And waters the ground with tears;

Then Humility takes its root

Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade

Of Mystery over his head,

And the caterpillar and fly

Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,

Ruddy and sweet to eat,

And the raven his nest has made

In its thickest shade.

The gods of the earth and sea

Sought through nature to find this tree,

But their search was all in vain:

There grows one in the human Brain.

Questions:

1. This poems is a response to the Innocent poem "The Divine Image." How are "Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love / Humility" developed from flawed pretenses?

2. When the speaker claims that the Tree of Deceit which leads to false "Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love / Humility" "grows ...in the human Brain," what is saying about the origins of evil?

Songs of Experience:

HOLY THURSDAY II

Is this a holy thing to see

   In 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,

   It is eternal winter there.

For where'er the sun does shine,

   And where'er the rain does fall,

Babe can never hunger there,

   Nor poverty the mind appall.

Questions:

1. Compare this poem to the first "Holy Thursday" in the Songs of Innocence: How are they similar?

2. Is the "eternal winter" and despair expressed in the first "Holy Thursday" in the Songs of Innocence?

Songs of Experience:

THE FLY

Little Fly,

Thy summer's play

My thoughtless hand

Has brushed away.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

For I dance,

And drink, and sing,

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life

And strength and breath,

And the want

Of thought is death;

Then am I

A happy fly.

If I live,

Or if I die.

Questions:

1. Why does the speaker find that he is like the fly?

2. What does the speaker seem to be saying about death and chance?

3. Is death the great equalizer of man and beast?

4. According to the poem, what is the definition of not living?

5. How is the man like the fly in life and in death?

Songs of Experience:

A POISON TREE

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears

Night and morning with my tears,

And I sunned it with smiles

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright,

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine, -

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning, glad, I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Questions:

1. What does the poem say about unexpressed anger and the potential for evil in humans?

2. What is the allusion to the Garden of Eden story / Paradise Lost? how does it help your understanding of the poem?

Songs of Experience:

LONDON

I wander through each chartered street,

   Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

A 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:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry

   Every blackening church appals,

And the hapless soldier's sigh

   Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear

   How the youthful harlot's curse

Blasts the new-born infant's tear,

   And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

Questions:

1. What are the details of this "Experience" poem that develop postlapsarian punishments?

2. What are " mind-forged manacles" and who creates them?

3. What do the "chimney-sweeper's cry," "blackening church" 

"hapless soldier's sigh" youthful harlot's curse" and "marriage hearse" symbolize?

William Blake (1757-1827)

Songs of Experience

The Clod and the Pebble

              "Love seeketh not itself to please, 

              Nor for itself hath any care, 

              But for another gives its ease, 

        And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair." 

So sung a little Clod of Clay 

              Trodden with the cattle's feet, 

              But a Pebble of the brook 

              Warbled out these metres meet: 

"Love seeketh only self to please, 

            To bind another to its delight, 

            Joys in another's loss of ease, 

      And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

Questions:

1. What is more durable: a clod of clay or a pebble?

2. What does love do according to the clod?

3. What does Love do according to the pebble?

4. A contentio is an argument in a poem in which two contradictory ideas are stated but the argument remains unresolved?

How is this poem a contentio?

5. How does this poem suggest that man is controlled by "the two contrary states of the human soul"? 

William Blake poems

Songs of Innocence and Experience

MOTTO TO THE SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

The Good are attracted by Men's Perceptions

And Think not for themselves

Till Experience teaches them to catch

And to cage the Fairies and Elves

And the Knave begins to snarl

And the Hypocrite to Howl

And all his good Friends shew their private ends

And the Eagle is known from the Owl.

HOLY THURSDAY I

ORGANIZED INNOCENCE:

Nurse's Song

by William Blake.

When the voices of children are heard on the green,

And laughing is heard on the hill,

My heart is at rest within my breast,

And everything else is still.

"Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,

And the dews of night arise;

Come, come, leave off play, and let us away,

Till the morning appears in the skies."

"No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,

And we cannot go to sleep;

Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,

And the hills are all covered with sheep."

"Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,

And then go home to bed."

The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laughed,

And all the hills echoed.

The Echoing Green 

The sun does arise,

And make happy the skies;

The merry bells ring

To welcome the Spring;

The skylark and thrush,

The birds of the bush,

Sing louder around

To the bells' cheerful sound;

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 and boys -

In our youth-time were seen

On the echoing green.'

Till the little ones, weary,

No more can be merry:

The sun does descend,

And our sports have an end.

Round the laps of their mothers

Many sisters and brothers,

Like birds in their nest,

Are ready for rest,

And sport no more seen

On the darkening green.