Songs of Experience

Songs of Experience

The Clod and the Pebble

This poem is carefully balanced poem. Two opposing ideas of love are sung by two inanimate objects. Each object is given half of the poem (one and a half stanzas). It brings together two views of love of in innocence and experience.

A ‘clod’ has connotations of dullness and stupidity, a ‘pebble’ has connotations of cold and hardness. However, they are complimentary.

At first reading it appears as if the Clod’s viewpoint is the right one, that love takes no thought for itself but willingly gives up everything for the beloved and ‘builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.’ A ‘clod’ being ‘trodden with the cattle’s feet’, this implies that the unselfish form of love is not necessarily the best one. The clods lover is the one that is taking and being made comfortable only through the discomfort of the clod.

The song by the pebble puts the opposite viewpoint – love is elfish and only wants ‘To bind another to its delight’. The pebble is describing the jealous kind of the love. The idea of a pebble, represents the materialistic world- it’s a voice of experience without wisdom. The pebble would need to find a lover willing to be committed to a demanding form of love.

The selfish and jealous kind of love would ‘build a hell in Heaven’s despite’ as it is a love that only takes and does not care for the giver. Blake is suggesting that if this relationship eisited in real life, the clod would be crushed by the pebble. Neither state is desirable. Similar to innocence is desirable without experience, or experience is desirable without wisdom.

The poem uses a lot of repetition and antithesis and the balance of form and metre suggests the balance of the two opposing views (innocence and experience).

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday from Experience is very different to Holy Thursday from Innocence. The first two stanzas ask questions, with implicit answers. The cheerful children have been replaced with the question,

‘Is this a holy thing to see,

In a rich and fruitful land,

Babes reduced to misery,

Fed with cold and usurious hand?’

The clear idea is that the wealthy country chooses to ignore the real needs of its children and, even when charity is provided, it is mean and without love or care. The word ‘usurious’ means the practise of lending money at unreasonably rates of interest. This suggests that the people who are lending money are expecting a lot from the children in terms of obedience. The noun ‘hand’ represents the whole city (possibly nation) and shows a social responsibly. This is NOT holy! They people have gone again Christ’s word to ‘love one another as I have loved you’.

The children aren’t raising their voices to heaven; the reader is asked,

‘Is that trembling cry a song?

Can it be a song of joy?

And so many children?’

The answer is given in the question. How can children be sing songs and be positive when they live in poverty. ‘It is a land of poverty’ he is referring to a spiritual poverty, brought by the lack of imagination. Many people lived in extreme poverty whilst the rich/wealthy had a desirable lifestyle and children suffered most.

‘And their sun does never shine.

And their fields are bleak and bare.

And their ways are fill’d with thorns

It is eternal winter there.’

This is the describing the situation where children have been reduced by those whose duty is too care for them and to ensure that their childhood is carefree and innocent.

Their misery is suggested by the drumming sound at the beginning of the each line implies that they are sacrificial victims, similar to Jesus. It also represents the people who fail to provide for the nation’s future children and citizens.

In the final stanza, the imagination shows the opposite:

‘For where-e’er the sun does shine

And where-e’er the rain does fall:

Babe can never hunger there,

Nor poverty the mind appal.’

Both sun and rain allow life. They work together to produce all life in general. Sun and rain are associated with spiritual life. Light = the heat of God’s love and the rain = the water of life. Children will never go hungry in heaven or in a land where they are cared about.

Blake is demanding justice for those who cannot fight for themselves. He also shows the huge gap between the rich and the poor in his society. He feels as if the Church and God’s people are the ones who are meant to be caring for others but they are the ones who are letting God down the most.

The Chimney Sweeper

Nurse’s Song

The Tiger

The Garden of Love

London

The Human Abstract