Two Poems by William Blake

The two poems by William Blake, "The Nurse's Song" and "The School-Boy," are each reminiscences as the poet looks back to his childhood and to the innocence of that time. He necessarily is looking back from his present age, a period when he is more experienced and in need of a return to the simpler times of his youth. Yet, in looking back he does so in a way that shows how experience colors innocence, much as his memories are now tempered by the realization he has gained of what is to come for the child he once was. In both poems, Blake uses images of nature and organic life to evoke an image of human life as something that grows and develops and also as something that withers and dies, indicating a complete life cycle that is as circular in its way as his memories curve back to an earlier time and then connect with his present.

"The School-Boy" evokes an image of carefree youth in summer right at the beginning of the poem:

And the sky-lark sings with me (1-3).

In this poem, the speaker identifies with the school-boy living in his time and reacting to his youthful life:

But to go to school in a summer morn,

Yet this speaker is an older man, for he talks of how "the little ones spend the day" (8), while he tells the reader that he (the poet) spends that time sitting and reading, unable to take delight in what he reads because he is thinking always of what the young

Related Essays

Poems of John Donne & William Blake .... of poems from John Donne's "Holy Sonnets" and William Blake's "Songs of .... to religion and politics established by these .... sets of poems, will analyze the .... (2194 9 )

William Blake William Blake is considered a creator of "great" poetry, defined by .... not touch him merely on one or .... sides of .... treated to a pair of companion poems that try .... (1890 8 )

William Blake's Songs of Innocence & Experience William Blake is considered a creator of "great" poetry, defined by .... not touch him merely on one or .... sides of .... treated to a pair of companion poems that try .... (1890 8 )

William Blake's "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" William Blake's "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" reflect on the .... in "The Tyger," Blake repeats most of the first .... The two poems together show different aspects of God .... (481 2 )

Poems of Donne & Blake .... of poems from John Donne's "Holy Sonnets" and William Blake's "Songs of .... to religion and politics established by these .... sets of poems, will analyze the .... (2194 9 )

s childhood, and his face turns "green and pale." The poem divides into two parts, with the first being an evocation of childhood in the day, while the second stanza turns to night. Again, the change from day to night brings out a sense of loss and the change from the innocence of childhood to the weariness and experience of old age. The voices of the children call to the poet and remind him of his youth--his face turns green and pale, as if that moment took him back to his own childhood and the time when he would have been playing on the green and whispering in the dale: The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale (3-4). In the second stanza, the poet seems to come to his senses and realize that time has passed. The sun has gone down, and he is calling the children home, calling back to himself the child that he once was. There is a bitter-sweet aspect to the admonishment he gives them in the last two lines: Your spring & your day are wasted in play, And your winter and night in disguise (7-8). The internal rhyme of line 7 links "day" with "play," and the spring of life is presented in this poem and in the other poem as a season of day. Winter is a season of night. The course of a year a

Category: Literature - T