"The Clod and the Pebble" is a poem from William Blake's 1794 collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience .
"The Clod and the Pebble" is a poem from William Blake's 1794 collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience .
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. [1]
"The Clod and the Pebble" is the exemplification of Blake's statement at the beginning of Songs of Innocence and of Experience that it is the definition of the "Contrary States of the Human Soul". It shows two contrary types of love. The poem is written in three stanzas. [2] The first stanza is the clod's view that love should be unselfish. The soft view of love is represented by this soft clod of clay, and represents the innocent state of the soul, and a childlike view of the world. [2] The second stanza connects the clod and the pebble. It gives the location of the clod, pleasantly singing his view while being trodden on by a cattle. At the end of the 2nd line the shift in views is signaled by a semicolon. This shift is further emphasized with the use of the word "But" at the beginning of the third line. [3] The pebble is meanwhile in the river warbling his view. [2] The final stanza is the pebble's view of selfish love, and it is set up in a parallel structure to the clod's stanza on unselfish love. [2]
Different kinds of love are exemplified in this poem. According to Joseph Heffner the clod singing shows "his view on love, which connotes a blissful joyfulness" and he believes that love should be unselfish. The pebble meanwhile has the opposite view that love is in fact selfish. [2] These differing views can also be seen as the difference between masculine and feminine love. [4]
The clod in this poem represents innocence. Its view of love is, according to Joseph Heffner, full of "childlike innocence." The choice of a clod of clay to represent this innocent view of love is significant because it is soft, and this view point is easily squished by life, or in this poem the foot of a cow. [2] The clod also represents innocence because it is made of clay, the same material God used to mold Adam. [3]
The pebble, with its solid and hard structure, represents being hardened by the experience of love and has, according to Joseph Heffner, gained authority through that experience. The pebble views love as something that is selfish. Also according to Joseph Heffner the use of the word "bind" by the pebble "suggests a sort of aggressive, violent and masculine view of love". [2]
The last stanza of the poem, the pebble's view of selfish love, was used as the epigraph for Evelyn Scott's 1921 novel The Narrow House. According to Pat Tyler, the women in this novel have been "hardened by her life experiences. Each is solely concerned with her own survival, hardened to the suffering of the others". [5]
The poem is also referenced, albeit misquoted, in The Goshawk by T. H. White. [6] [7]
"The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake, published in 1794 as part of his Songs of Experience collection and rising to prominence in the romantic period. The poem is one of the most anthologised in the English literary canon, and has been the subject of both literary criticism and many adaptations, including various musical versions. The poem explores and questions Christian religious paradigms prevalent in late 18th century and early 19th century England, discussing God's intention and motivation for creating both the tiger and the Lamb.
"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. Originally, Blake illuminated and bound Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience separately. It was only in 1795 that Blake combined the two sets of poems into a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Even after beginning to print the poems together, Blake continued to produce individual volumes for each of the two sets of poetry.
The Book of Thel is a poem by William Blake, dated 1789 and probably composed in the period 1788 to 1790. It is illustrated by his own plates, and compared to his later prophetic books is relatively short and easier to understand. The metre is a fourteen-syllable line. It was preceded by Tiriel, which Blake left in manuscript. A few lines from Tiriel were incorporated into The Book of Thel. Most of the poem is in unrhymed verse.
"The Little Black Boy" is a poem by William Blake included in Songs of Innocence in 1789. It was published during a time when slavery was still legal and the campaign for the abolition of slavery was still young.
"The Blossom" is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789.
"The Garden of Love" is a poem by the Romantic poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection, Songs of Experience.
"Holy Thursday" is a poem by William Blake, first published in Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1794. This poem, unlike its companion poem in "Songs of Innocence" (1789), focuses more on society as a whole than on the ceremony held in London.
"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 Little Vagabond is a 1794 poem by English poet William Blake in his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience. His collection, Songs of Innocence, was originally published alone, in 1789. The scholar Robert Gleckner says that the poem is a form of transformation of the boy in the poem "The School Boy", from Songs of Innocence.
Hypotaxis is the grammatical arrangement of functionally similar but "unequal" constructs ; certain constructs have more importance than others inside a sentence.
"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.
"To Tirzah" is a poem by William Blake that was published in his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience. It is often described as the most difficult of the poems because it refers to an oblique character called "Tirzah", whose identity is not directly stated. It is a Hebrew name that appears in the Torah, meaning "she is my delight". According to Northrop Frye, Blake identified the name Tirzah with worldliness, because the name appears in the Bible to refer to both a rebellious town and to one of the Daughters of Zelophehad. The latter story was about female inheritance rights which were linked to restrictions on marriage and the maintenance of tribal boundaries.
"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.
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.
"Night" is a poem in the illuminated 1789 collection Songs of Innocence by William Blake, later incorporated into the larger compilation Songs of Innocence and of Experience. "Night" speaks about the coming of evil when darkness arrives, as angels protect and keep the sheep from the impending dangers.
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).
"The Little Boy Found" is a poem by William Blake first published in the collection Songs of Innocence in 1789. Songs of Innocence was printed using illuminated printing, a style Blake created. By integrating the images with the poems the reader was better able to understand the meaning behind each of Blake's poems.
"A Cradle Song" is a poem written by William Blake in 1789, as part of his book Songs of Innocence.
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