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Blake, William | Article View | |
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Early Poetry |
The volume published by Flaxman was a collection of Blake’s youthful verse. Amid its traditional derivative elements are hints of his later innovative style and themes. As with all his poetry, this volume reached few contemporary readers. In 1789, unable to find a publisher for his Songs of Innocence, he and his wife engraved and printed them at home, and also produced The Book of Thel. Both these early works display stylistic and ideological characteristics that become more marked in Blake’s later work. The Book of Thel represents the maiden, Thel, lamenting change and mutability by the banks of a river, where she is comforted by the lily, the cloud, the worm, and the clod. Yet the final section, with its vivid and horrible images of death, seems to contradict the explicit Christian message of the rest of the poem. Blake also wrote Tiriel around 1789, although it was not published until 1874. Songs of Innocence, now probably Blake’s most famous work, is written in a lyric style of great freshness and directness. Here is the “Nurse’s Song” from Songs of Innocence, quoted in full:
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 cover’d with sheep.”
”Well, well, go & play till the light fades away
“And then go home to bed.”
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh’d
And all the hills echoed.
In 1794, disillusioned by the apparent impossibility of human perfection, Blake issued Songs of Experience, employing the same lyric style, and often using the same titles and themes as in Songs of Innocence, but perverting the sing-song rhythms so that they seem sinister and resonant with a darker meaning. Here is the “Nurse’s Song” from Songs of Experience:
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And whisp’rings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.
Then come home my children, the Sun is gone down,
And the dews of the night arise;
Your spring & your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.
Innocence and Experience, “the two contrary states of the human soul”, are contrasted here, and both series of poems take on greater resonance when read together. The innocence of childhood is contrasted with the corruption and repression of the adult world. Blake’s subsequent poetry develops the implication that true innocence is impossible without experience, transformed by the creative force of the imagination.
