By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘Infant Sorrow’ is the counterpart to ‘Infant Joy’: whereas ‘Infant Joy’ appeared in William Blake’s 1789 volume Songs of Innocence, ‘Infant Sorrow’ was published in his 1794 volume Songs of Experience. Before we proceed to an analysis of Blake’s poem, here’s a reminder of ‘Infant Sorrow’.
By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘The Little Black Boy’ is a poem from William Blake’s 1789 volume Songs of Innocence. Before we proceed to an analysis of Blake’s poem, here’s a reminder of ‘The Little Black Boy’. The Little Black Boy My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘Cradle Song’ is intended to be sung by a mother to her newborn child in order to lull the baby to sleep. The repetition of ‘Sweet’ at the beginning of many of the poem’s stanzas (or perhaps we should say, the song’s verses) helps to create […]
Published in Blake’s 1789 book Songs of Innocence, ‘A Dream’ is about William Blake’s vision of three insects: an ant (‘emmet’), a beetle, and a glow-worm, which is in fact a kind of beetle. Not only that, but these are talking insects: the emmet confides that she has lost her […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle ‘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 […]