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. [1]
The following is a transcription of the poem: [2]
Youth of delight come hither.
And see the opening morn,
Image of truth new born.
Doubt is fled & clouds of reason
Dark disputes & artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze,
Tangled roots perplex her ways.
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead
And feel they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others when they should be led.
The poem is not known in any draft or manuscript version. Initially it was a part of the Songs of Innocence and printed as verso to The Little Black Boy ; however, in the latest issues it is commonly placed last, forming a connecting link with the Introduction to the Songs of Experience . [3] But much later, only after 1818(!), it was moved into Songs of Experience and became a terminal poem of all the collection of the Songs.
Blake speaks here as the Ancient Bard and the Prophet (who also appeared in the Introduction to the Songs of Experience), trying “to reassure the ‘Youth of delight’ that the morning of regeneration is at hand, when the doubts and disputes of mortal life will be dispelled, even though many have fallen on the way.” [4]
The illustration shows the Bard, a gowned bearded old man, playing a large celtic triangular harp to the listening youths and maidens: two children standing in the middle of the group, and six older youths. There are two young females standing to the left who embrace. Two children and a group of three females stand to the right facing the bard. Another female at their feet, facing them, kneels on a grassy ground. The text above is decorated with leaves and vine.
Swinburne was one of the first reviewers of the poem in his Critical essay (1868), speaking about Blake as a voice of the ancient bard, who “summons to judgment the young and single-spirited, that by right of the natural impulse of delight in them they may give sentence against the preachers of convention and assumption”. [5] For him the initial placement of this poem at the end of the Songs of Innocence seems to be quite convincing, because in this case it serves as a natural prelude to the Songs of Experience and its Introduction, where the same bard is acting.
But most scholars point out the duality and ambiguity of the poem. Stanley Gardner, stressing the double character and function of it in the collection of the Songs, notices that “the morning promise to the ‘youth of delight’, and the dispelling of doubt and despair, are accessories to Innocence: but the tone of the lines does not belong to the lightheartedness of true Innocence... Then in the last six lines the poem shifts towards Experience, identifying the ‘folly’ with perplexity among ‘roots’ that recollect ‘the forest of affliction’... and, in the end, a sense of regret is expressed that those who ‘wish to lead others’ are obsessed with selfish care...” [6]
This ‘forest of affliction’ we encounter in the Song of Enitharmon from the poem Vala, or The Four Zoas :
I wake sweet joy in dens of sorrow & I plant a smile
In forests of affliction
And wake the bubbling springs of life in regions of dark death [7]— Night the Second, lines 371-373 (Page 34, lines 85-87)
However, there is another opinion introduced by E. D. Hirsch, Jr, that the poem “belongs neither to Innocence nor Experience”. [8] He regards The Voice of the Ancient Bard as “Blake's first apocalyptic outburst,” a poem that “harks back to the Ossianic experiments in Poetical Sketches , but the tone is unlike anything in Blake's earlier poetry.”< [9] So, this is a poem which anticipates later prophetic works. It is fundamentally different from the poems in the canon of Innocence as well as of Experience. Here Blake addresses “neither child nor an adult, as in other poems, but a ‘youth’”. [10] The new and better world is not a traditional Eden or the pastoral Heaven of theSongs of Innocence, but “a repudiation of all the old traditions”, [10] and its dawn is quite similar to that in A Song of Liberty (1793):
Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her golden breast,
Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying
Empire is no more! And now the lion & wolf shall cease. [11]— "A Song of Liberty" lines 19-20, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
It is a significant fact that the poem is dated by 1789, the year of French Revolution, that “was the occasion for a radical change in Blake’s valuation of actual life”, [12] and the reviewer sees this dawn, though “ambiguous and unspecific”, as a prophecy of “the dawn of an entirely spiritual and inward Jerusalem which prefigures the final, spiritual Eternity that will end time and death forever.” [13]
The poem has been set to various different musical scores:
"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.
"The Echoing Green" is a poem by William Blake published in Songs of Innocence in 1789. The poem talks about merry sounds and images which accompany the children playing outdoors. Then, an old man happily remembers when he enjoyed playing with his friends during his own childhood. The last stanza depicts the little ones being weary when the sun has descended and going to their mother to rest after playing many games.
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.
"London" is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Experience in 1794. It is one of the few poems in Songs of Experience that does not have a corresponding poem in Songs of Innocence. Blake lived in London so writes of it as a resident rather than a visitor. The poems reference the "Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". The "Songs of Innocence" section contains poems which reference love, childhood and nature. Critics have suggested that the poems illustrate the effects of modernity on people and nature, through the discussion of dangerous industrial conditions, child labour, prostitution and poverty.
Holy Thursday is a poem by William Blake, from his 1789 book of poems Songs of Innocence.
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 Angel" is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794.
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.
"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.
"A Divine Image" is a poem by William Blake from Songs of Experience, not to be confused with "The Divine Image" from Songs of Innocence. The poem only appeared in copy BB of the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
"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.
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.
"The Little Boy Lost" is a simple lyric poem written by William Blake. This poem is part of a larger work titled Songs of Innocence which was published in the year 1789. "The Little Boy Lost" is a prelude to "The Little Boy Found".
"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 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.