"A Little Girl Lost" is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was first published as part of his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1794. The poem is written as a clear authorial commentary from Blake, focusing on the tension between human passions and societal expectations. [1]
Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.
In the age of gold,
Free from winter's cold,
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.
Once a youthful pair,
Filled with softest care,
Met in garden bright
Where the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.
Then, in rising day,
On the grass they play;
Parents were afar,
Strangers came not near,
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.
Tired with kisses sweet,
They agree to meet
When the silent sleep
Waves o'er heaven's deep,
And the weary tired wanderers weep.
To her father white
Came the maiden bright;
But his loving look,
Like the holy book
All her tender limbs with terror shook.
'Ona, pale and weak,
To thy father speak!
Oh the trembling fear!
Oh the dismal care
That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair!'
In her analysis of the poem for the journal The Explicator , academic Katelin E. Trowbridge describes the poem's narratorial voice as a projection of "his own passionate voice" about the subject of pleasure and social expectations. Trowbridge focuses on the Girl's fall from innocence as one of the poem's critical moments, where she can experience the pleasures of sexual relations with her lover but in turn feels guilt when confronted by her father. The conflict between father's pressures and maiden's feelings allows Blake to "expose paternal tyranny masquerading as Christian love" while revealing "his own emotional reaction to the maiden's torment." [1]
"The Lamb" is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789.
"The Chimney Sweeper" is the title of a poem by William Blake, published in two parts in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience in 1794. The poem "The Chimney Sweeper" is set against the dark background of child labour that was prominent in England in the late 18th and 19th centuries. At the age of four and five, boys were sold to clean chimneys, due to their small size. These children were oppressed and had a diminutive existence that was socially accepted at the time. Children in this field of work were often unfed and poorly clothed. In most cases, these children died from either falling through the chimneys or from lung damage and other horrible diseases from breathing in the soot. In the earlier poem, a young chimney sweeper recounts a dream by one of his fellows, in which an angel rescues the boys from coffins and takes them to a sunny meadow; in the later poem, an apparently adult speaker encounters a child chimney sweeper abandoned in the snow while his parents are at church or possibly even suffered death where church is referring to being with God.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases: a few first copies were printed and illuminated by Blake himself in 1789; five years later, he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Blake was also a painter before the creation of Songs of Innocence and Experience and had painted such subjects as Oberon, Titania, and Puck dancing with fairies.
Nurse's Song is the name of two related poems by William Blake, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience in 1794.
"Ah! Sun-flower" is an illustrated poem written by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794. It is one of only four poems in Songs of Experience not found in the "Notebook".
Earth's Answer is a poem by William Blake within his larger collection called Songs of Innocence and of Experience. It is the response to the previous poem in The Songs of Experience-- Introduction . In the Introduction, the bard asks the Earth to wake up and claim ownership. In this poem, the feminine Earth responds.
"The Clod and the Pebble" is a poem from William Blake's 1794 collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
The Little Girl Lost is a 1794 poem published by William Blake in his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience. According to scholar, Grevel Lindop, this poem represents Blake's pattern of the transition between "the spontaneous, imaginative Innocence of childhood" to the "complex and mature adult state of Experience."
"Infant Joy" is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was first published as part of his collection Songs of Innocence in 1789 and is the counterpart to "Infant Sorrow", which was published at a later date in Songs of Experience in 1794.
"The Shepherd" is a poem from William Blake's Songs of Innocence (1789). This collection of songs was published individually four times before it was combined with the Songs of Experience for 12 editions which created the joint collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794). Blake produced all of the illuminated printings himself beginning in 1789. Each publication of the songs has the plates in a different order, and sixteen other plates were published posthumously.
"The Fly" is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794.
"The Human Abstract" is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794. The poem was originally drafted in Blake's notebook and was later revised for as part of publication in Songs of Experience. Critics of the poem have noted it as demonstrative of Blake's metaphysical poetry and its emphasis on the tension between the human and the divine.
Introduction to the Songs of Experience is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was etched and published as part of his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1794.
The Voice of the Ancient Bard is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Innocence in 1789, but later moved to Songs of Experience, the second part of the larger collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1794.
Spring is a lyric poem written and illustrated by William Blake. It was first published in Songs of Innocence (1789) and later in Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794).
"Laughing Song" is a poem published in 1789 by the English poet William Blake. This poem is one of nineteen in Blake's collection Songs of Innocence.
"A Little Boy Lost" is a poem of the Songs of Experience series created in 1794 after the Songs of Innocence (1789) by the poet William Blake. The poem centers on the theme of religious persecution and the corrupted dictates of dogmatic Church teachings. As part of Songs of Experience the poem is set in the wider context of exploring the suffering of innocent and oppressed individuals—in this case a young boy, and his parents—within a flawed society that is oppressed and disillusioned with life's experience.
"The School Boy" is a 1789 poem by William Blake and published as a part of his poetry collection entitled Songs of Experience. These poems were later added with Blake's Songs of Innocence to create the entire collection entitled "Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". This collection included poems such as "The Tyger", "The Little Boy Lost", "Infant Joy" and "The Shepherd". These poems are illustrated with colorful artwork created by Blake first in 1789. The first printing in 1789 consisted of sixteen copies. None of the copies of Songs of Innocence are exactly alike as some of them are incomplete or were colored in posthumously "in imitation of" other copies.
"A Dream" is a poem by English poet William Blake. The poem was first published in 1789 as part of Blake's collection of poems entitled Songs of Innocence.
"A Cradle Song" is a poem written by William Blake in 1789, as part of his book Songs of Innocence.
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