[Ostentatious]

Right:
Society

London

‘mind-forged manacles appear’- Blake expresses how the minds of people in London are controlled and manipulated by society, they are made to do things they don’t want to, they are without the free will Blake believed we should each have.
‘a mark in every face I meet’- Blake explains how everyone in London is affected in some way by society, they are also each labelled and divided to social groups and classes- An effect of the Industrial Revolution which influenced Blake
‘a hapless soldiers sigh/ Runs in blood down palace walls’- Blake shows his anger against war and how the bloodshed is caused by those in power, the government
‘blackening church appals’- The church and society condones the awfulness of child labour, here the image makes the church seem as if it is covered in black and darkness, an evil representation and also it is covered in the soot of the chimney sweepers.
‘the youthful harlot’s curse/ Blasts a new born infant’s tear’ - Blake shows how the ugliness of cursing and position hides the innocence of a child and therefore corrupts it. - Links to Plato’s theory which Blake believed- that the soul exists before birth and when a child is born it becomes trapped within it and then becomes corrupt by society.
‘And blights with plague the marriage hearse’- Blake uses juxtaposition the compare a happy image of marriage with that or death. He is almost implying that this marriage will fail, the couple will both inevitably die soon as a result of veneral disease.

The Schoolboy

-’how can a bird that is born for joy/ Sit in a cage and sing?’- Blake explains his anger at how an innocent and joyful child can be placed in the confinement to school, the child is not allowed to express his happiness, everything expected of youth.
-’forget his youthful spring?’ Blake again questions the awfulness of a child being made to repress his joy and happiness, soon the boy’s youth will fade away and we never have chance to get it back.
-’blasts of winter’- The winter symbolises old age, the boy will soon become old without ever having experienced the joy of youth.

Holy Thursday (Experience)

-’is this a holy thing to see?’ Rhetorical questions, the audience know the awfulness of starvation and hunger, Blake plays with our emotions.
-’in a rich and fruitful land’- Blake mentions the wealth of England and how awful it is to have poverty still exist. The world is full of food and yet we are too selfish to share it.
‘a babe reduced to misery’- Blake uses an innocent child to express the horrors of poverty in our world, how can something that is born so happy be reduced to pain and suffering.
‘eternal winter’- Contrasting with Blake’s references to nature in the ‘Innocence’ section, Blake here reacts more coldly towards it. Blake creates a link with the child and nature- during nature they both suffer from the cold and lack of food around.

Nature

The Little Girl Lost

‘bowed his mane of Gold’- here the lion is used to represent God himself, after noticing Lyca’s innocence and youth, he sees her as no potential threat to nature and therefore allows her to frolic among it.
‘naked they conveyed/ To caves the sleeping maid’- Here the animals are used to symbolise two separate things. One could be how they are comforting and protecting Lyca from the harm and corruption of society, they are almost providing a parental relationship with her- highlighting Blake’s belief that we should all be at one with nature, it preserves our innocence. This also links to Rousseau’s view that all men is good by nature, while men are among it they will not become corrupt, as it is society that causes this.

Nurse’s song (Innocence)
-’my heart is a rest within my breast’- The nurse explains her joy and comfort in seeing the children play on the green. Like in ‘Echoing green’ when the old folk admit to ‘laugh away care’ when they are surrounded by the innocence of children, they forget their age. The image of the female ‘breast’ also creates a very comforting and motherly image, the idea of paternal nature, all women feel this instinct to care and protect children.
-’dews of night arise’- The nurse expresses her fear of the children being in danger when the darkness appears, she sees it as a threat to the children. Here Blake introduces the often darker imagery used in the ‘Experience’ section possibly to show that corruption is everywhere, we must each fight to ignore it. This idea is also shown in the end of the ‘Echoing green’ when Blake mentions that the green is ‘darkening’ as night commences, at this point the children run to their mother’s for protection.

The Schoolboy
-‘how can a bird that is born for joy/ Sit in a cage and sing’ - Here the bird is symbolising that of the children and how their innocence is bound by the education system, they are not allowed to express their youthful happiness. This image is particularly effective because a bird is often presented as symbolising liberty and freedom, things the child is not allowed to have.
-’birds sing on every tree’- These are the images the children want to see and restricted from being around in their youth. This idea of freedom reflects Blake’s support for the French revolution, the fight for freedom.
-’blasts of winter’- Again Blake uses nature negatively to symbolise old age and how this is all the children will see.

Blake’s Religion
-Blake, like Swedenborg, disagreed with the Holy Trinity, he believed we each had a personal relationship with God. Blake also disagreed with the orthodox church, he was against the Old Testament and organised religion.

The Garden of Love

-’Thou shall not’- Blake’s anger with the Old Testament, believed it taught Christians to bind their joy and natural desires, it made them Satanists. He believed joy glorified God.
-‘a chapel built in the mist’- An ugly and darkening image of the church, evil.
-’gravestones where flowers should be’- Religion forces death to replace happiness. Blake hated the way Christians were made to believe that by suffering in life, they would be repaid by God in the after life. Link to ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ Innocence- ‘if all do their duty they need not fear harm’
-’binding with briars my hopes and desires’ Blake felt ‘sin’ was created by Christianity as a device to make men bind and repress their natural desires.

A Little Girl Lost

Blake shows they importance of free love and sexual relationships, Blake was against forced marriage believed marriage should be about love and not religion or honour.
-‘father’s loving look’- Blake contrasts the image of a loving father with the image of the girl shaking with terror. It is almost as if the father is smiling at the child’s fear and sins- ‘pale and weak’
-’all her limbs with terror shook’ - the girls fear after her dad finding about her sexual freedom, he, like the bible is against it and feels it is a sin. She shakes with terror because she is afr9ad of punishment. The girl is ‘lost’ in the poem from the cold religion that turns it’s back on her beliefs and also from the her hope in finding natural love.

-Holy Thursday- Experience
‘a land of poverty’
‘ babe reduced to misery’


Little Vagabond

‘Church is cold’- Blake felt the church at the time was cold because it turned it’s back on it’s followers, did not care for their desires and feelings.
-’we’d sing and we’d pray all the livelong day’- Blake felt that if the church was a place of warmth and happiness, more people would go to it.
-This poem is read from the voice of a child. This is effective because it makes the words sound very innocent and therefore believable to the audience, they tend to think, why isn’t this possible?

Blake as a romantic
‘Imagination is not a sate: It is the human existence itself’
‘Art is the tree of life, Science is the tree of death’
‘I must create my own religion ‘or be enslaved by another man’s’
‘Great thing happen when men and mountains meet’


‘The Little Girl Lost’
-’naked they conveyed/ To caves the sleeping maid’- Blake believed we should each be at one with nature, it helps preserve our innocence.
- ‘Leopards, tigers play’- Blake believed nature was something organic, it was not ‘mechanical’ like Science had suggested.
-’a desert mild/ became a garden mild’

London
-‘mine-forged manacles’- Blake believed people were ruined by society, they were each controlled by it and made to do things against their will when really they should be ‘free’.
-’mark in every face I meet’- Everyone has become corrupted by religion, we are also each labelled by it and put into categories.

The Garden of Love
-’binding with briars my hopes and desires’
-’gravestones where flowers should be’
-’chapel built in the mist’

The Chimney Sweeper (Experience)
-’they are both gone up to church to pray’
‘that make up a heaven of misery’


Religious Imagery

Holy Thursday (Innocence)
-’lest you drive an angel from your door’
-’innocent hands’ ‘innocent faces’
-’harmonious thunderings’- the heavenly songs and hymns

The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)
-’ an angel who had a bright key/ …set them all free’
-’all do their duty, they need for fear harm’

The Little Girl Lost
-’Maker meek’
-’Desert wild/became a garden mild’
-’kingly lion stood’
‘bowed his mane of gold’

Sexual Relationships

A Little Girl Lost
-’love! True love! Was thoughts crime’- Blake talks to the audience as if recalling a past time when free love was not allowed, instead it was suppressed by the ‘holy book’.
-‘free from winters cold’- Blake explains of how the couple are free from all restrictions and bounds at this moment, they are ‘Lost’ from society and allowed to express their true emotions.
-’strangers come not near’- This could be showing the secrecy of the couples antics but also show how society disapproved of this love, they turned their back on it’.
-‘his loving look/ Like the holy book’- In this ironic image Blake expresses how society and religion was anything but ‘loving’ towards people that expressed this ‘free love’ which Blake believed in.
-‘her limbs with terror shook’- the girl is terrified of her father’s reaction to her sinning, he is ‘pale and weak’ and has disobeyed him, she is afraid of any punishment.

The Little Girl Lost
-’Do mother and father weep?’- Lyca is free from the restraints of society and her family, she is ‘lost’ from it and is therefore allowed to experiment and explore with nature.
-’tigers, lions play’- this image could be representing sexual games and joys of both Lyca and the nature as they express their own desires and joy.
‘naked they conveyed /To caves the sleeping maid’ This suggests a sexual act between both Lyca and nature, But could also symbolise a loving and paternal relationship between the child and nature as they sense her innocence.

‘London’
‘the youth harlot’s curse/ Blasts the newborn infants tear’- Here Blake takes on a more negative view of sexual desire, here he refers to a prostitute as something corrupted by society.
‘and blights with plague the marriage hearse’- Here the juxtaposition with the two words ‘marriage hearse’ imply that the marriage will be a disaster, the pair will both inevitably die as a result of veneral disease. Here Blake introduces that this ‘free-love’ can become corrupt when it is exploited and used away from nature.