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



















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





















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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2. William Blake

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