Lesson 10

WILLIAM BLAKE
(1757-1827)

William Blake is one of the prolific English poets. Largely unknown during his life time,
Blake is now regarded as an influential figure in the history of English poetry and visual arts.
His visual artistry has led contemporary critics to proclaim him “far and away the greatest
artist Britain has ever produced.”

William Blake was the second son of James Blake and Catherine Blake. He learned to read
and write at home. Blake was a visionary from his early age and claimed to have visions -
first time he saw God when he was only four; God put His head to the window and set him
screaming. Four years later he saw a tree filled with angels. It was soon apparent that Blake’s
internal world of imagination would be a prime motivator throughout his life. Noting
something special in their son the Blakes were highly supportive of and encouraged his
artistic creativity and thus began his education and development as an artist.

Blake is a naturalist as he deals with the simplest pleasures of life –with the instinctive life of
a child, with the love of flowers, hills and streams, the blue sky and the brooding clouds.
Blake regards nature as a source of wonder and creativity.

Many of Blake's best poems are found in two collections “Songs of Innocence” (1789) and
“Songs of Experience” (1794). The complete collection was called “Songs of Innocence and
Experience” (1794). The collection shows two contrary states of human soul, and Blake
believes that these contraries are needed to make human progression possible. The poems in
two sections have a difference of character between them. ‘The Songs of Innocence’ sets out
an imaginative vision of the state of innocence and ‘The Songs of Experience’ shows how
life challenges, corrupts and destroys it.

Blake is held in high regards by later critics for his vision and artistry. He begins by breaking
the shackles of language. He is a poet of humanity and wider sympathy. He has raised the
banner for the liberty and equality of man; he is also an early champion of feminism. Above
all he is a complete man; his poetry is a perfect medium for expressing the eternal truth in life
without distortion.

London
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd 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-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry

Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

Commentary

The poem “London”, originally published in Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience”,
has been written during the times of the French Revolution and is a biting satire on the 18 th
Century London. The poem is a scathing attack on the contemporary society in which the
under-privileged sections have been reduced to dire distress and the poor and the powerless
find themselves without help and hope. It is a world of mourning and sorrow.

The poem depicts Blake’s criticism of society, of the whole trend of contemporary society
and of the whole trend of contemporary civilization. Blake describes the sights he sees as he
walks through the streets of London. The repetition of the word “charter'd” in the first stanza
stresses Blake’s anger at the political times and his feelings towards the ruling class, as the
rich and the ruling classes have exploited the poor and hung their prosperity on that
exploitation. As the narrator wanders, he notices, the suffering population:  “Marks of
weakness, marks of woe”. The people seem to be frustrated and broken and London presents
the picture of misery and weakness.

The second stanza presents the picture of a whole society in chains, and emphasizes the
feeling of imprisonment. The ‘mind –forged manacles’, symbolizes the fetters which the
authority has imposed upon the people. It represents the effects of the civil and the moral law,
which according to Blake, always creates obstacles and causes misery. Though the people
cannot voice out against the authority yet it seems that their cries are audible to the poet as he
walks by. There is lack of free expression and he uses the word "ban" which reveals how
people were unable to voice their criticism on the ruling class. The words "fear", "cry", "ban",
and "mind-forg'd manacles" describe people who are suffering and frightened and their
feelings are imprisoned in their own minds.

The tone of anger and condemnation rises in the third verse, when Blake utilizes imagery of
destruction and religion. The ‘chimney sweep’ symbolizes the destitute children while the
‘soldier’ represents the anguish of those who have to serve in the army under difficult
conditions. Blake uses the religious imagery of the "black'ning church" to represent the loss
of innocence, and the society's abandonment of religion. As the church building is literally
"black'ning" with smoke from the chimneys, so the church as an organization, which should
help the poor, is blackened, metaphorically, with shame at its failure to give that help. The
"hapless soldier's sigh" symbolizes how men are drafted into war and have no choice but to
serve their country.

The most poignant and brooding part of the poem is the last stanza, which describes the lot of
the harlots. The society forgets that it is its own injustices, cruelty, lack of compassion and
also the inhuman moral and social codes which have reduced these women to harlotry; they
take to prostitution, most often to keep the world off their door. Here Blake is pointing a
finger at the rich men who might use the services of prostitutes and then get married and pass
on sexually transmitted diseases to their wives. The word "plagues" here suggests the
sexually transmitted diseases which the "youthful harlot" would contract and pass on to
others. In this way their actions affect the lives of all the innocent people involved.

The basic theme of the poem is man's lack of freedom and the causes of this lack. The poem
is a powerful indictment of a society which not only tolerates but perpetuates chimney
sweepers and harlots. Daring imagery has been used to depict the deformations demonstrated
in child labor, militarism, and barbarity of the era. With the few strokes the poet has depicted
the blighted world of slavery, exploitation and cruelty. The Chimney-sweepers, the soldiers
and the harlots are Blacke’s types of the oppressed___ the victims of a system which is not
based on equality but on fear and the freedom to oppress. Blake shows us the shams on which
the society thrives___ and a society which poses to be a champion of freedom and fair play.
The poem, gives the impression that London is a very deprived and uncaring city.

The tone of poem is obviously sorrowful and sad. In the first two stanzas, Blake utilizes
alliteration and word choice to set the mournful atmosphere. The poem has a total of sixteen
lines which are divided into four stanzas with a rhyming ‘ABAB’ pattern throughout the
poem. Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the poem, and it serves to emphasize
the prevalence of the horrors the speaker describes.

Activity:
Q1: What effects do the poem's insistent particularity and totality have - i.e. "charter'd,"
"mark," every"?
Q2: Which river has been mentioned in the poem?
Q3: How will you interpret the word ‘charter'd,"’ in the first stanza of the poem?
Q4: The miseries of whom has been discussed in the second stanza of the poem?
Q5: How does the chimney-sweeper's cry blacken Church appalls? Discuss.
Q6: Whose sigh "runs in blood down Palace walls"?
Q7: Why is the reference to prostitution the most significant one to the speaker, as we see
from the last stanza?
Q8: What does the term “Marriage hearse” symbolize in the poem?
Q9: Why is the poet attacking on the contemporary, political and the ruling class of his
times?

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.

Commentary

“A Poison Tree” was written in 1794 by William Blake as a part of his collection of poems,
“Songs of Experience”. The poem is based on the fundamental human passion of love and
hate .It is a scathing criticism on the suppressed elements of malice and hatred in man. The
poem tells how anger can be dispelled by goodwill, or can be nurtured to become a deadly
poison.

The opening of the poem depicts a contrast between love and hate, benevolence and
malevolence and shows how people categorize their fellows as 'friends' or 'foes’. The speaker
explains that once he was angry with ‘his friend’ but he told his friend about his anger and
that ended the negative attitude towards the friend. But then he got angry with another
person, whom the speaker considered his ‘foe’ because he did not talk out his wrath with the
enemy, ‘the wrath did grow’. The secrecy of feeling was intensified with the passage of time
and enmity kept on simmering and began to grow in the form of a poisonous tree that
sprouted a bright but poisonous apple. The poet’s enemy was lured by the deceptive apple,
ate and died due to its poisonous effects.

It is a thought provoking poem, deeply symbolic and moralizing. Wrath (anger) and desire to
triumph over enemies is the basic theme of the poem. The suppressed anger and malice can
make a person destructive and revengeful. The anger depicted here is not the anger we call
the heat of the moment, but "wrath", one of the seven deadly sins.

The fruit that the tree bears is something terrible yet tempting. This can be compared to the
story of the Garden of Eden. The Fruit of Knowledge appeared good at first, but has deceived
both Adam and Eve. Likewise, the speaker seems friendly towards his foe, but has developed
deceitful manners to hood-wink the enemy.

The poem emphasizes that we should not nourish anger and hatred in our hearts. Hatred
grows into enmity, enmity breeds fear and fear gives rise to revenge .Therefore the poem is a
symbolic representation of hatred, cunningness, hypocrisy, cleverness and other negative
human traits. It projects a conflict between the good and the evil. The poet teaches us the
moral lesson of great importance.

The poem has a number of contrasts, love and hatred, friend and foe, trust and distrust, fears
and tears and so on. It is full of contrasting abstraction and symbols such as love, hate, apple,
poisonous tree, wrath, water, tears, wiles etc.

It is a simple narrative in the form of a parable. The title of the poem is appropriate and
symbolizes anger and hatred. The poem consists of 16 lines and is divided into four stanzas
with the rhyme scheme AABB.

Activity:
Q1: What does the apple symbolize and why does it kill the foe?
Q2: Why does the foe try to steal the apple?
Q3: What does the ‘pole’ signify in the last stanza of the poem?
Q4: What contrasts are discussed in the poem?
Q5: Pick out all the words related to hate and anger.
Q6: Is there any moral lesson in the poem? If any? Discuss.
Q7: Is the title of the poem appropriate? Discuss
Q8: Why would you consider this poem to be a ‘Song of Experience’?
The Little Black Boy

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but oh! my soul is white.
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,

And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say:

"Look on the rising sun, -there God does live

And gives his light, and gives his heat away;
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space

That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learned the heat to bear

The cloud will vanish, we shall hear his voice
Saying: `Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice!' "

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;

And thus I say to little English boy:
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear

To lean in joy upon our father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

Commentary

"The Little Black Boy" was published in “Songs of Innocence” in 1789, a time when slavery
was still legal and the movement for the abolition of slavery was still young. Blake is a great
upholder of the equality of all men. Apparently the poem establishes a spiritual unity between
the Black and the White, however, Blake has a deeper message to convey to his reader
through this poem. The poet is hinting at the hard life which the ‘Blacks’ in the southern wild
have to lead, when he refers to the self consciousness of the little boy about his black skin.

The boy, who was born in “the southern wild” of Africa, first explains that though his skin is
black, his soul is as white as that of an English child. The exclamation " And I am black, but
oh! my soul is white” indicates despair and genuine longing to be accepted and understood.
The child’s mother represents a natural and selfless love that becomes the poem’s ideal. She
convinces him that this earthly life is but a preparation for the rewards of heaven. Therefore
in this context, their skin color is but a cloud and will vanish soon and the black boy will
become one with the white boy.

The black boy internalizes his mother’s lesson and applies it in his relation with the white
child. The boy explains to his white friend that there is no difference between them but they
will not be truly free until they are released from the constraints of the physical world. He
vows that in the heaven they both will be free of their bodies and he will shade his white
friend until he, too, learns to bear the heat of God’s love. Then, the black boy will be like his
friend, and the white boy will love him. This statement shows that the black boy is better
prepared for heaven than the white boy. This is part of the soothing vision with which his
mother has prepared him and as a result his sufferings become a source of pride rather than
shame. We do not know the response of the white boy as Blake’s focus is on the mental state
of the black child.

The poem revolves around the theme of slavery and the slave's mentality. Here the black boy
has become the mouth piece of the poet. Through this poem, Blake does not criticize God or
any race, but he shows that we are all ultimately the same. The little black boy asks the
questions as to why he is black instead of white. Why is he different from others?

The theme of supervision, protection, and taking care of another person, is also very
prominent in the poem. This guard ship is present at three discrete levels in the poem. It
begins with the little boy's mother, followed by God, and ultimately ending with the innocent
little black boy himself.

The poem has total of 28 lines which are divided into 7 stanzas with the rhyming ABAB
pattern throughout the poem. The language of the poem is simple yet it arouses the feelings
of sympathy with the black boy. The poem ends on the note of subjugation.

Activity:

Q1: Why does the little ‘black boy’ lament in the beginning of the poem?
Q2: What does “bereaved of light" indicate in the first stanza of the poem?
Q3: What does the child’s mother signify?
Q4: What lesson does the black boy learn about the white and the black treatment in heaven
from his mother?
Q5: Which metaphor has been used for human body in the poem?
Q6: On what note does the poem end?
Q7: Is the ending of the poem justified? Discuss.
Q8: Is there any moral lesson in the poem? If any? Discuss.
Q9: ‘Blacks were marginalized at the time the poem was written’, Discuss the theme of
slavery keeping in view the scenario of Blake’s times.

Tyger

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

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

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright

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

Commentary
This is one of the most famous and the most impressive of Blake’s poems “The Tiger,"
originally called "The Tyger," is a lyric poem focusing on the nature of God and his
creations. It was published in 1794 in a collection entitled ‘Songs of Experience’. In this
poem the poet questions about the Evil, and the Good, which are symbolised in the ‘Tyger’
and the ‘Lamb’, respectively. The poem begins with the poet addressing a fearsome tiger,
who is ‘burning bright’ in the forest of night, and asks him which immortal creator has made
your fearful symmetrical body?
In this poem, Blake represents the conventional idea that the nature, like the work of art, must
in some way contains an indication of its creator. The tiger is remarkably beautiful yet
ferocious. What type of a God, then, could design such a violent beast as the tiger? Does the
existence of evil in the world tell us about the nature of God? The tiger initially appears as a
stunningly sensuous image but as the poem develops, it takes on a symbolic character, and
represents the spiritual and the moral problems the poem explores: perfectly striking and yet
perfectly destructive.
In the beginning of the poem the tiger burns in the forests of the night. In the second stanza
the fire of his eyes burns in distinct deeps or skies. The concentration of the reader is
reinforced in the question, “What immortal hand or eye?” which keeps the mind of the reader
on the violent aspects of the creator, as well as the tiger.

The poet has used the metaphor giving the vision of a skillful and powerful blacksmith,
creating a powerful beast. He asks questions about the instruments used by God as he lists the
hammer, the chain, the furnace, and the anvil. All these tools are used by an ironsmith. Thus,
according to the poet, God is a kind of craftsman. After that, the poet asks two significant
questions. The first one refers to God’s feelings:
‘Did he smile his work to see?’
In other words, was God happy with his creation? The second question is:
‘Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’
The tiger is so terrifying and so shapely that seeing it along with the lamb; it appears to be an
act of miracle. The reference to the lamb in the ultimate stanza provides an obvious contrast
between the violence of tiger and the meekness of a lamb. Hence, this theme: humans are
incapable of fully understanding the mind of God and the mystery of his handiwork runs
throughout the poem.

The tiger extends into realms beyond the realm of meaning. The implications in these short
six verses are vaster than in anything else. The concentration of cosmic distance and depth
within a single fiery frame is intense. The strength of the poem depends partly on the most
effective use of the rhetorical questions which invite the reader to think about. The poet
leaves us to awe at the complexity of creation, the sheer magnitude of God’s power, and the
inscrutability of the divine will.

The poem comprises of twenty-four lines that are divided into six stanzas with the rhyme
scheme AABB. The meter is regular and rhythmic; its hammering beat is suggestive of the
smithy that is the poem’s central image. The poem has a string of questions all of which
contribute to the articulation of a single, central idea. There are words related to the tools
used by an ironsmith like, ‘hammer’, ‘chain’, ‘furnace’, and ‘anvil’. Also, we can find the
natural imagery like ‘forests’, ‘skies’, ‘Tyger’, ‘Lamb’, ‘deeps’ and ‘skies’. The simple
structure and the vocabulary help the reader to understand the main topics or concepts, which
are Evil, Good, and God.

Activity:
Q1: What visual image do lines 1 & 2 create?
Q2: In line 7 what does the word ‘aspire’ mean and in the same line what does “he” refer to?
Q3: Discuss the imagery of ‘Blacksmith’ in the fourth stanza of the poem.
Q4: What is the implied concern of the poet in the question about the Lamb?
Q5: What is the answer to the question in the line 20 of the poem, "Did he who made the
lamb make thee?"
Q6: Why does the speaker need to ask the question? Who is "he," i.e. the lamb's creator?
Q7: Why would you consider this poem to be a Song of Experience?
Q8: The first stanza and the last stanza appear similar, but one word changes everything.
What is that one word and why is that one word significant?
Q9: What does the ‘Tyger’ represent? Why?
Q10: Contrasting words and images are used aptly in this poem. Comment