GREAT BOOKS STUDY

British Museum  
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Copy T, Plate 1

Recently I was invited to lead a Great Books Study on the Poetry of William Blake. Only an introduction to a very large subject could be included in time allotted. The participants had prepared by studying the material which was distributed ahead of time.
 
I introduced Blake with these words:
 
"Blake lived from 1757-1827. His lifespan covered a tumultuous period of history including the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the Industrial revolution and the Enlightenment. He endeavored to maintain human values in the face of the turmoil around him. To be fully human meant to be created in the image of God with all the potential for actualization which it implied. To open the minds of men to the infinite possibilities of recognizing oneself as belonging to an eternal dimension was what motivated him to create.
 
He wrote, he painted, and he engraved in unique ways which garnered little attention during his lifetime. But it has since been recognized that his thought and the individualistic ways in which he conveyed it, speak to the human condition profoundly. His work is an invitation to look within and find there a key to understanding the painful contradictions encountered in the external world."
 
Five poems were read aloud and discussed freely and honestly. The goal of sharing Blake's thought in order to become open to alternative ways of relating to the world, to one another and God was realized. These are the poems explored in the study:
 
Songs of Innocence, Songs 9 and 10, (E 9)
 "The Little Black Boy
 My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;

White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.      
And flowers and trees and beasts and men recieve
Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face      
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

Song 10  
For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus  did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy;
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me."

Songs of Experience, Song 30, (E 18)
"Introduction
Hear the voice of the Bard!

Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose ears have heard,
The Holy Word,
That walk'd among the ancient trees.

Calling the lapsed Soul
And weeping in the evening dew:
That might controll,
The starry pole;
And fallen fallen light renew! 

O Earth O Earth return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass, 
 
Turn away no more:
Why wilt thou turn away
The starry floor
The watry shore
Is giv'n thee till the break of day."

Songs of Experience, Song 32, (E 19)
"The CLOD & the PEBBLE              

Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.

     So sang a little Clod of Clay,      
     Trodden with the cattles feet:
     But a Pebble of the brook,
     Warbled out these metres meet.

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite."

Songs of Experience, Song 25, (E 18)
"The Tyger.                                        

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,            
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies.        
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?            
On what wings dare he aspire?      
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?   
 
What the hammer? what the chain, 
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,          
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!                  

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?                 
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:                       
What immortal hand or eye,                    
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"

Poetical Sketches, (E 415)
"  MAD SONG.

The wild winds weep,
  And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
  And my griefs infold:                  
But lo! the morning peeps          
  Over the eastern steeps,
And the rustling birds of dawn     
The earth do scorn.

Lo! to the vault
  Of paved heaven,              
With sorrow fraught
  My notes are driven:
They strike the ear of night,
  Make weep the eyes of day;
They make mad the roaring winds,      
  And with tempests play.

Like a fiend in a cloud
  With howling woe,
After night I do croud,
  And with night will go;         
I turn my back to the east,

From whence comforts have increas'd;
For light doth seize my brain
With frantic pain."
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