William Blake Poems Essay Example for Free

William Blake Poems Essay Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience appears to be very simplistic on first reading. Explain how the poems are in fact a much more complex exploration of Blakes beliefs and times. William Blake was born in London in 1757. He was home educated and was part of the upper working class as his father was a hosier. He was sent to a drawing school and was a dissenting Christian. His Christian beliefs are reflected in several of his poems. Blake became married in 1783 and married for love rather than money and status. To understand his poems fully we first need to understand what the titles of his two major sets of poetry mean. Innocence in the terms of Blakes poetry is a person who has very little experience and does not know about the bad things that happen in life-Quoted from the Dictionary. Immediately a link is made between the songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Experience on the other hand means (the process of getting) knowledge or skill which is obtained from doing, seeing or feeling things-Quoted from the Dictionary. These two themes are explored significantly within the poems. During Blakes time in London he saw many different movements and ideas develop such as a revolution in America where a group of British Colonies decided to rebel against Britain in their chance to gain independence. When the victory of this was won America and its allies of France and Spain went to war against Great Britain. Blake used this amongst other themes as the base for his poetry, and because of this he is associated with the Romantic poets even though he was not classed as a Romantic. Another main theme at the time was the use of seven year olds as chimney sweeps. Young boys were used because hard tar often got caught up in the chimney which a brush could not dislodge. To send a boy up was the easiest way to get rid of it and the flexible undeveloped body made it easy. They were often caught in the chimneys and many became cripples and got suit filled lungs. In London alone there were over 1000 sweeps. Blake uses this as one of the topics for both Songs of Experience and Inn ocence. In his two poems The Chimney Sweeper he utilises several literary techniques to create a successful poem. In The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence) Blake uses sorrowful imagery to create an atmosphere of anger and pain, my father sold me while yet my tongue shows just how young the boys were when they sold into the apprenticed with a master sweep. The repetition of, weep!, meant to be sweep which adds to the words meaning because it links the job of the child with his sorrow and also creates an atmosphere of rhythm of a brush going up and down within the chimney. On the other hand in The Chimney Sweeper (Experience) the boy is not introduced by his father but by a description of himself as a black thing amongst the snow which sounds as something discarded and dehumanises him. In this case snow is not used for peace and purity but for cold and harshness. The colour opposites of white snow and black dirty boy are another literacy technique of comparative representation by descriptive contrast. Weep is also used in this version but the words are described as being criedin notes of woe! This links directly to sadness and cruelty rather than being hidden inside the verse as is shown in Songs of Innocence. Religion is brought into this by the parents going to church to pray which also illustrates the normalness of their lives compared to their sons and highlights their hypocrisy. This is due to them being all good by going to Church and yet they are sending their son to work at such a young age and are almost bringing upon his fate of an unhappy life. In the second verse in the Innocence version the boys head curled like a lambs back which links to the symbolism of the lamb being the son of God which is one of the main themes in another poem from Songs of Innocence the Lamb. The Lamb is a prime example of innocence imagery because it is used in such a context as to promote the idea that the lamb symbolises not only pastoral imagery but Christ as the lamb of God. The boys hair is described as white to represent purity and innocence but then colour imagery is used to emphasise dark and light, good and bad. In The Chimney Sweeper (Experience) the boys appearance is described yet in a different way to that of the innocence poem, his health is described first as happy but this is talked about in the past tense. Blake is touching on the illnesses Chimney Sweepers got, such as cancer. His clothes are then described metaphorically as Clothes of death which when put into context of the work he was doing tells the reader that the clothes he is wearing to work symbolise his status and remind the reader that this job was very hazardous and also is describing the soot on his body. This again links into the poem The lamb where the clothes are described as Softest clothing woolly bright which has no indication of death by of life. This shows the difference between life and death as in most Chimney Sweepers lives death came upon them unnaturally quickly. Some children that were not put into the trade of chimney sweeping then they would instead be educated (if their parents possessed the money) and if not the children were sent to Charity schools. These were schools that were established by mainly religious organisations and were used to educate children until they could be put into a trade. These schools were often cruel institutions. Blake uses the subject of Charity Schools for one of his sets of poems entitled Holy Thursday. The title Holy Thursday comes from the British celebration of Jesus ascension. In the first line (of the Innocence version) it mentions the children who were in this school as having innocent faces clean showing immediately that Blake found them to be innocent. The second line has a Bible reference to Noahs ark; the children walking two two makes them sound more like animals and is also reminding the reader that just like Noahs animals they were the future of Blakes Britain. It also signifies that they were the future of the world as were the animals in Noahs ark. From his poems we can somewhat assume that Blake found Charity schools to be a money making scheme. This is proved by his view on the so called religious people who ran the schools. In the second line the masters are described as having wands as white as snow which shows them as having power because although white is generally used to show innocence in this case the word snow contradicts this as Blake often used snow to symbolise cold, dark and evil ambitions and scenarios. London is also mentioned in the first verse by the high dome of Pauls and the Thames water which in those days was very dirty, but was an integral part of London as were the children. Blake uses religious imagery within the innocence version quite a bit towards the end. A mighty wind[raised] to heaven, is used to create an idea based around the childrens voices as if they were crying so loud that heaven could hear them. The owners are described as wise guardians, which is ironic and patronising as Blake actually is meaning that they are horrible and cruel and have no knowledge what so ever. In the experience version of Holy Thursday Blake puts forwards different ideas. He starts off by talking about the fruitful children which are then reduced to misery. This symbolises them coming into the schools cheerful and full of happiness and then being shafted out woeful. The representation of children to money is also used by calling them rich. This has been used to remind the reader that Blake saw the owners of these schools as money hungry and the only reason they did it was for the money. In the second verse Blake talks of the feelings of the children as trembling [cries], the meaning of this is to show that the children were desperate as they were children poor?. Pastoral imagery is used in this version not to represent innocence to the destruction of innocence via experience Field are bleak and bare. This shows that after the schools the children had lost their innocence, stripped of it, and there was and is nothing they could do about it, It is eternal winter there shows the eternal evil within the schools. From this anger of London via the chimney sweeps and charity schools we find even more anger within Blakes poem A Poison Tree. This poem expresses Blakes anger and hatred for things in general. The last verse of this poem sums up what happened to the innocence of the children And into my garden stole-It had been stolen. A Poison Tree is another poem from Blakes Songs of Experience. It follows a different rhyming pattern compared to other poems written by Blake. It uses the rhyming patter a,a, b,b whereas other poems generally used a,b,a,b. This change in rhyme immediately hits the reader and also makes the poem more alive with passion due to the flow of the rhythm. The first lines holds a contradiction I was angry with my friend, it forces the reader to ask the question of why the person is angry with their friend, it insights them to read on. It talks of how the person in the poem tell his friend why he is angry with him and because of this [his] wrath did end. On the other hand when it comes to being ,angry with [his]..foe, he did not say anything and so the ,wrath did grow. The meaning of this first verse is to try and show that by keeping anger hidden within other things it does not diminish but grows. This links in to what Blake was doing. He did not openly express his views but concealed his anger within his poetry. The second verse talks of tears and smiles these two opposites show split personality. The meaning of the tears is the water that the Poison tree was given and the smiles are the sun. This contradiction makes the tree slowly grow ,both day and night. This idea of growth relates to children growing up but being fed with the wrong views which means that they can turn out evil. This view of the, finished product, is shown when the tree bore and apple. The apple signifies the apple in Genesis and the evil of the world was concealed in this apple. Maybe Blake is trying to say the God was wrong to conceal the evil within one thing and that from it more evil has occurred which is true. The last link to religion links into Blakes poem The Echoing Green from Songs of Innocence which shows a completely different view of the world. This poem also follows the same rhyming pattern of A Poison Tree which once again gives it more flow and rhythm. When read, the poem has a sort of Sing song feel to it which goes along with the happiness expressed within the poem. It talks of change from innocence to experience. In the second verse Blake talks about a monk Old John and then links him to experience with White hair. The white described in this verse is a pure white which shows that Blake is not totally against experience. There is alot of repetition in this poem with, bells, symbolising religious festivals such as Christmas which tells the reader a little about Blakes religious life. The repetition emphasis this and makes the reader take it in. Blake also links children with pastoral imagery, girls and boys were seen One the Echoing Green which is used as another way of expres sing that the children are innocent. This idea of pastoral imagery is also shown in two of Blakes most famous poems The Lamb and The Tyger. In these two poems Blake uses several imagery techniques. In The Lamb he puts forwards the idea of nature via Stream and Oer the mead. The idea of nature links into innocence and the fact that the countryside is un-poisoned as it has not been influence by the hammer, Chain and furnace mentioned in The Tyger which symbolises the industrial revolution which is William Blakes view on experience altering innocence. William Blake links the industrial revolution with the, forests of the night [and] hand or eye, which is imagery of humans and shadows. As William Blake was a devout Christian in his own way he includes God in his poem of The Lamb. In fact God is included in the name of his poem as Jesus was the lamb of God. Blake uses assonance to create subtle rhyming in which the reader can pick up over time. Softest clothing is an example of this. The subtle link adds to the effect of beauty that the Softest clothing creates. The use of this adds meaning to the poem because clothing is used to cover people and so William Blake might be trying to say that by covering your true self you are loosing the innocence of individuality. Another effect used in The Lamb is the fact that there is not much punctuation. This surprisingly creates a weird flowing nursery rhyme effect. On the other hand in The Tyger lots of somewhat harsh punctuation is used to create a pounding rhyme which inspires the reader to imagine the atmosphere of machinery. The reason for the mis-spelling of tiger is because Blake was self taught. This is a good example of differences in class at the time of William Blake. The poems from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience have more meaning than the reader might first imagine due to mainly the events that were surrounding their author William Blake at the time of their writing. By the harsh reality of London at that time Blake incorporates the Chimney sweeps, Charity schools, London in general and the industrial revolution into his poems. He does not openly state what each poem is about but within in writing we can pick up on ideas and themes that influenced him to write these poems. While reading these poems people pick up on the things happening at the time due to the detail in which they are described in poetry. These poems are not just poems, they are more like Blakes autobiography on his life through the form of media he liked best, poetry.