By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Little Boy Found’ appeared in William Blake’s 1789 volume Songs of Experience, where it follows the companion-poem ‘The Little Boy Lost’. Before we proceed to some words of analysis, here’s a reminder of ‘The Little Boy Found’, one of Blake’s most popular lyric poems.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Infant Joy’ is a poem that was first published in William Blake’s 1789 volume Songs of Innocence. Like many of Blake’s poems from the two Songs collections, ‘Infant Joy’ is fairly straightforward and its meaning is reasonably plain – and yet the poem requires a little analysis to tease out its deeper ambiguities and subtleties.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
There are two ‘Chimney Sweeper’ poems by William Blake. The first appeared in Songs of Innocence in 1789, while a second poem, also called ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ was included in Songs of Experience in 1794.
Like many of Blake’s most celebrated poems, ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ – in both versions – uses fairly straightforward language, although some words of analysis may help to shed light on the meaning of these two poems.
Let’s start with the first ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ poem, from the 1789 volume, followed by some words of analysis.
A summary of Blake’s classic poem by Dr Oliver Tearle
‘The Lamb’ is one of William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence’, and was published in the volume bearing that title in 1789; the equivalent or complementary poem in the later Songs of Experience (1794) is ‘The Tyger’.