William Blake: The Poems

Nicholas Marsh

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781350310216
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria en la poesía

William Blake was ignored in his own time. Now, however, his Songs of Innocence and Experience and 'prophetic books' are widely admired and studied. The second edition of this successful introductory text:
- Leads the reader into the Songs and 'prophetic books' via detailed analysis of individual poems and extracts, and now features additional insightful analyses
- Provides useful sections on 'Methods of Analysis' and 'Suggested Work' to aid independent study
- Offers expanded historical and cultural context, and an extended sample of critical views that includes discussion of the work of recent critics
- Provides up-to-date suggestions for further reading William Blake: The Poems is ideal for students who are encountering the work of this major English poet for the first time. Nicholas Marsh encourages you to enjoy and explore the power and beauty of Blake's poems for yourself.

PART 1

ANALYSING WILLIAM BLAKE’S POETRY

Introduction

The Scope of This Volume

The aim of this book is to introduce the reader to Blake’s thought, by way of the Songs of Innocence and Experience, and at the same time equip the reader to approach Blake’s symbolic Prophetic Books with confidence.

The Prophetic Books have a reputation as ‘difficult’ texts. Intricate symbolic interpretations too often overwhelm any enjoyment of the poetry and drama in which they abound. The new reader feels bewildered by the scholarship of professional critics, who often make Blake’s symbols seem more ‘difficult’ than they need to be. This book demonstrates that a sound grasp of Blake’s ideas can be carried from the Songs, and confidently applied to the prophecies. The second, third and fourth chapters of Part 1 will show how to do just that: conclusions deduced from analysing the Songs are carried forward and applied to sample passages from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Europe, A Prophecy; The First Book of Urizen; The Book of Thel; and finally we consider some short extracts from Milton, A Poem, one of the three long prophetic works which stand like giants towards the end of the Blake canon.

Analysing Metre

We will make use of metrical analysis or ‘scansion’ when analysing the Songs of Innocence and Experience. Many courses no longer teach this, so a short explanation will help, before we start. First, I would point out that ‘metrical analysis’ is a useful tool, a convenient way of labelling patterns and units of rhythm, and no more. Critics often argue that ‘scansion’ was wrongly imported from classical poetry written in Greek and Latin, because English is a different language where sounds and emphases do not behave as a Roman thinks they should. This introduction explains the technical terms we will use; but we must remember to be flexible, and use common sense, when applying classical scansion to English.

Metrical analysis relies on recognising that language is a string of syllables (complete sounds), some of which we say with more ‘weight’, ‘emphasis’ or ‘stress’ than others. So, in any phrase there are ‘stressed’ syllables and ‘unstressed’ syllables. Look at the first line of one of Blake’s most famous poems:

Tyger tyger burning bright

I have emboldened the stressed syllables. There is no real argument: everybody will naturally ‘stress’ these same syllables. To prove this, try to say the line aloud, stressing the wrong syllables, and you will hear something like this:

Tigerr tigerr beningbret

It hardly sounds like English, and a listener would not understand what you are saying. You can try this with everyday phrases – it is surprisingly difficult to talk in reversed stress, and it sounds like gobbledegook.

Now look back at the correct ‘stress’ pattern of Blake’s ‘The Tyger’. The first rhythmic unit in the line is made up of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable: ‘tyger’. Each unit of rhythm is called a foot. This kind of unit, which goes stressed-unstressed, is called a trochee or trochaic foot. You can remember what a trochaic foot sounds like by memorising the word ‘dumdy’.

We have not quite finished with the first line of ‘The Tyger’. There are three complete trochaic feet in the line, then there is one stressed syllable on its own: ‘bright’. This is quite common, because English poetic lines tend to end on a stressed syllable; it has the effect of adding an involuntary pause at the end of the line – we unconsciously wait the split-second it would take to say the expected but missing unstressed syllable before reading the next line. The point is that the end of the line is irregular. We hardly ever find pure, regular metre in an English poem. The language, and poets, constantly adjust, deny or change the over-rigid pattern. So we must be ready to be flexible when deciding what kind of ‘metre’ a poem has, and make a reasonable judgment. We will often have to settle for finding the ‘predominant’ metre, despite frequent irregularities like the missing syllable at the end of our line from ‘The Tyger’.

This line introduced us to trochaic feet. There are three other metres. An iambic foot goes unstressed-stressed, and you can remember it by memorising the word ‘de-dum’. Blake’s ‘The Divine Image’ begins in a regular iambic metre:

To Mer / cy Pi / ty Peace / and Love,

All pray / in their / distress:

An anapaestic foot goes unstressed–unstressed–stressed, and you can remember its sound by memorising the word ‘diddy-dum’. Blake’s ‘Nurse’s Song’ begins in anapaests:

When the voi / ces of chil / dren are heard / on the green

The fourth and last kind of ‘foot’ is a dactyllic foot. This goes stressed-unstressed-unstressed, so it is a back-to-front anapaest. You can memorise the sound of a dactyl by memorising the word: ‘dum-diddy’. This is a rare metre: there are no full dactyllic lines in the Songs of Innocence and Experience although Blake sometimes uses a dactyllic foot or two and we will refer to them. Here is an example of dactyls, three lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’:

Cannon to / right of them,

Cannon to / left of them,

Cannon in / front of them

Notice that these different ‘metres’ have different characters. Tennyson’s dactyls are ideal for hinting at the rhythm of galloping horses. Anapaests give a lilt, and generally sound bouncy and light. Iambs are steady, and iambic is the most common and most flexible metre in English – it can be made to express almost any mood. Trochees tend to beat on the ear, with a heavy and immediate thump in the first sound (Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ is full of the imagery of hammer, anvil and forge, which is further evoked by the heavy beat of the metre).

This is the technical information needed to follow the metrical analyses found in the next four chapters. It only remains to remember that ‘scansion’ is a useful tool, a convenient way of labelling units of rhythm: it is not a ‘thing’ in its own right. So, why is it interesting?

I have mentioned the different ‘characters’ or ‘moods’ that different metres can evoke; but there are many other ways that metrical analysis can help us to understand how or why a particular effect is created, or can point us to the crucial part of the poem where the poet breaks his pattern. For these reasons, metrical analysis can be a very enlightening ‘tool’.

Blake’s Engraved Plates

Blake wrote his poems and drew the designs that frame them onto rectangular copper ‘plates’; he then used acid to corrode the unmarked portion of the copper surface. Finally, he inked this engraved ‘plate’ and used it to print his poem and its design onto paper. Usually, he then coloured the print by hand. He was passionate about combining words and vision into a single work; and he printed and coloured by hand, with small variations, because he wanted every print to be a different, unique, hand-produced work of art.

This fact has consequences for the way we study Blake’s poems. When we merely read them, and address the poems as literature, we are engaged in a partial, even distorted response to the ‘whole work’ Blake created. On the other hand, it is inevitable that Blake’s poetry will be studied in an exclusively literary way; there is not enough space in a book like this one to discuss both the poetry and its attendant graphic art together.

I have decided on a compromise. In Chapter 1, there are descriptions of the design for each poem analysed, and interpretation of the designs is discussed. Six of the designs discussed in Chapter 1 are reproduced on pages 29, 30, 32, 34, 37 and 39. After Chapter 1, however, the designs are only occasionally mentioned and this book concentrates on the poetry. Readers are urged to obtain, or find in a library, an illustrated copy of the Songs of Innocence and Experience to use while studying Blake; or to make use of the William Blake Archive on the internet, at www.blakearchive.org, where you can see all of the poet’s engraved plates whether from Innocence and Experience, or from the Prophetic Books, on the screen and in full colour. Seeing the ‘whole work’ in which text and graphic art interweave and interact is a great advantage. It will enrich your pleasure and appreciation of the works themselves, and it is the honest way to read Blake – the way he meant us to see his poetry.

1

Innocence and Experience

‘Introduction’ (Songs of Innocence)

When you first take up the challenge of studying his writings, William Blake seems to be a special case. He claimed to have visions, he was an eccentric (some people will tell you he was mad) and he did not publish his poems in the ordinary way by having them printed. Instead, he engraved them on metal plates using acid to eat away the designs, and each page is a sinuous, living swirl of shapes, with branches, snakes and other emblems often growing between the lines of poetry. When they had been printed, Blake, or his wife, coloured the plates carefully by hand. The finished works were sold to patrons and friends, in small numbers. You may feel that Blake was an oddity, and will be difficult to understand.

If you then turn to the critics, you are likely to find them indulging a rage for symbolic interpretation that can increase your confusion. If we plunge into the longer Prophetic Books, Milton, Vala or the Four Zoas and Jerusalem, we are likely to lose our way quickly: Blake invented so many deities and symbolic characters that it is difficult to acquire a sense of what they all signify. Also, even in Blake’s own day, few readers would have been erudite enough to recognise all of the mythological and theological references, coinages and puns in which his work abounds.

However, we refuse to succumb to all the ‘expert’ pressure, and pseudo-biographic prejudice, that surrounds Blake’s reputation. We believe that we can read the poems as poems. We must not bring any preconceptions to this work; on the contrary, we are convinced that a detailed, analytical study of the poems will reveal their significance.

We start, then, by looking in detail at the first two poems from Songs of Innocence. We should notice, however, that the title of the collection already provides us with an aim: to find out what Blake meant by the word ‘Innocence’. Here is the first poem, ‘Introduction’:

Piping down the valleys wild

Piping songs of pleasant glee

On a cloud I saw a child.

And he laughing said to me.

Pipe a song about a Lamb:

So I piped with merry chear,

Piper, pipe that song again –

So I piped, he wept to hear.

Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe

Sing thy songs of happy chear,

So I sung the same again

While he wept with joy to hear.

Piper sit thee down and write

In a book that all may read –

So he vanish’d from my sight,

And I pluck’d a hollow reed.

And I made a rural pen,

And I stain’d the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs,

Every child may joy to hear.

(K2, 4)

This clear song is not at all difficult: the story it tells is obvious on a first reading, and it has the short lines, easy rhymes, regular metre and simple vocabulary of a nursery rhyme or children’s song. Nonetheless, we will analyse the poem in detail.

The story is clear. A ‘piper’ meets a child who first asks for ‘a song about a Lamb’, then encourages him to pipe, then sing, and finally write down his happy songs that ‘Every child may joy to hear’. This is a simple story, but it is helpful to look at its stages or sections more closely. The music begins as non-specific ‘songs of pleasant glee’. The child then specifies a subject: the music will be ‘about a Lamb’. Next, he urges the Piper to ‘Drop thy pipe’ and sing instead, so we assume that the music ‘about a Lamb’ is no longer just a melody: it has words which fit the music and express the Piper’s meaning. Finally, the song becomes only words, which are not the Piper’s spontaneous singing any more: they are written down ‘In a book that all may read’. Notice that the child made the Piper pipe the same song twice (stanza 2), and when he sang it was ‘the same again’, so the song itself has been performed three times, becoming more and more fixed, less and less spontaneous, as it develops from a purely musical expression of pleasure (‘Piping songs of pleasant glee’) and turns into a permanent written record (‘In a book that all may read’). Blake emphasises that the final written song is unchanging, and universal, by his repetition of this idea. It is a book that may ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• General Editor’s Preface
• A Note on Editions
• A Note on Technical Terms
• Part 1 ANALYSING WILLIAM BLAKE’S POETRY
• Part 2 THE CONTEXT AND THE CRITICS
• Further Reading
• Index