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7/21/2019 2. William Blake
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2. WILLIAM BLAKE
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P7 L20-21: Blake seemingly again shows his human optimism by saying that if a fool is allowed to
continue in his folly he will eventually learn and become wise. This links to the earlier proverbs
about wisdom and excess.
P7 L22: Knavery is an unprincipled or dishonest dealing or trickery. Blake seems to think that folly
is the cause for such actions.
P7 L23: Most probably ironical yet self explanatory.
P8 L1-2: Prisons are where one pays the price for ones wrongdoings to the state. A brothel is where
one sells one's body and Church is where one sells one's soul. Also we have prisons because we
have laws and prisons are a symbol of punishment here. We have brothels, Blake says, because we
have religion which makes sex wrong or sex before marriage wrong.
P8 L3: Pride is one of the seven deadly sins, yet in nature one considers it to be a piece of natural
beauty for example the peacock.
P8 L4: Lust is also one of the seven deadly sins, but in the goat in grants him lots of kids which used
to be taught as the bought of god, i.e. that a parent received a litter of younglings.
P8 L5: Wrath another deadly sin, the deadly sins are not biblical but medieval theology adopted and
propagated by the Catholic Church. The Lion is a highly symbolic creature and also a biblical
creature. To survive it must be wrathful to scare off rivals and that is the lion's wisdom. Another
interpretation could be that wrath in justice is seen as wisdom.
P8 L6: Don't be ashamed of God's work. Woman was made beautiful and shame of her form is
foolish and possibly Blake might be saying with a twist of irony that it is also irreligious.
P8 L7: Possibly this could be taken to mean that once one has reached the bottom the only way
forward is up and vice versa.
P8 L8-10: Rather ambiguous and problematic a possible interpretation would be the immensity of
these powerful and destructive events has occurred too many times for man one man to exist or for
history to know of.
P8 L11: Man blames captors and not himself for his wrongs and down fall. Scooby Doo is a good
example 'Yeah and I would have got away with it too if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!'
P8 12: Joys impregnate the soul and human experience. Sorrows bring forth from the soul possibly
its endurance or those happy memories to relieve some of the pain. Think of the poem 'Love to
faults is always blind'.
P8 L12-13: This might be considered sexist but Blake is saying that man should wear the
courageous or possibly wise mantle while woman that which is possibly submissive or innocent. In
biblical terminology sheep were always seen as prey to lions, and sheep live in flocks while Lions
can be lonesome creatures.
P8 L14: Each animal has its habitat and for man his habitat is among other people, among friends.
Two pieces of ancient thought that might have influenced or agreed with this idea, one being the
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2. WILLIAM BLAKE
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consonant with Blake’s perpetual interest in reconsidering and reframing the assumptions of
human thought and social behavior.
The Lamb
Summary
The poem begins with the question, “Little Lamb, who made thee?” The speaker, a child,
asks the lamb about its origins: how it came into being, how it acquired its particular
manner of feeding, its “clothing” of wool, its “tender voice.” In the next stanza , the speaker
attempts a riddling answer to his own question: the lamb was made by one who “calls
himself a Lamb,” one who resembles in his gentleness both the child and the lamb. The
poem ends with the child bestowing a blessing on the lamb.
Form
“The Lamb” has two stanzas, each containing five rhymed couplets. Repetition in the first
and last couplet of each stanza makes these lines into a refrain, and helps to give the poem
its song-like quality. The flowing l’s and soft vowel sounds contribute to this effect, and also
suggest the bleating of a lamb or the lisping character of a child’s chant.
Commentary
The poem is a child’s song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza is ruraland descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains
explanation and analogy. The child’s question is both naive and profound. The question
(“who made thee?”) is a simple one, and yet the child is also tapping into the deep and
timeless questions that all human beings have, about their own origins and the nature of
creation. The poem’s apostrophic form contributes to the effect of naiveté, since the
situation of a child talking to an animal is a believable one, and not simply a literary
contrivance. Yet by answering his own question, the child converts it into a rhetorical one,
thus counteracting the initial spontaneous sense of the poem. The answer is presented as a
puzzle or riddle, and even though it is an easy one—child’s play—this also contributes to
an underlying sense of ironic k nowingness or artifice in the poem. The child’s answer,
however, reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and his innocent acceptance of
its teachings.
The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores
the Christian values of gentleness, meekness, and peace. The image of the child is also
associated with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for children, and the
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2. WILLIAM BLAKE
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Divine Image.” Proceeding through Pity, Mercy, and Peace, the poem then arrives at the
phrase “selfish loves.” These clearly differ from Love as an innocent abstraction, and the
poem takes a turn here to explore the growth, both insidious and organic, of a system of
values based on fear, hypocrisy, repression, and stagnation.
The description of the tree in the second part of the poem shows how intellectualizedvalues like Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love become the breeding-ground for Cruelty. The
speaker depicts Cruelty as a conniving and knowing person; in planting a tree, he also lays
a trap. His tree flourishes on fear and weeping; Humility is its root, Mystery its foliage; but
this growth is not natural; it does not reflect upon the natural state of man. Rather, the tree
is associated with Deceit, and its branches harbor the raven, the symbol of death. By the
end of the poem we realize that the above description has been a glimpse into the human
mind, the mental experience. Thus the poem comments on the way abstract reasoning
undermines a more natural system of values. The result is a grotesque semblance of the
organic, a tree that grows nowhere in nature but lies sequestered secretly in the humanbrain.
London
Summary
The speaker wanders through the streets of London and comments on his observations. He
sees despair in the faces of the people he meets and hears fear and repression in their
voices. The woeful cry of the chimney-sweeper stands as a chastisement to the Church, and
the blood of a soldier stains the outer walls of the monarch’s residence. The nighttime
holds nothing more promising: the cursing of prostitutes corrupts the newborn infant and
sullies the “Marriage hearse.”
Form
The poem has four quatrains, with alternate lines rhyming. Repetition is the most striking
formal feature of the poem, and it serves to emphasize the prevalence of the horrors the
speaker describes.
Commentary
The opening image of wandering, the focus on sound, and the images of stains in this
poem’s first lines recall the Introduction to Songs of Innocence, but with a twist; we are
now quite far from the piping, pastoral bard of the earlier poem: we are in the city. The
poem’s title denotes a specific geographic space, not the archetypal locales in which many
of the other Songs are set. Everything in this urban space—even the natural River
Thames—submits to being “charter’d,” a term which combines mapping and legalism.
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