A Reading of Blake's A Cradle Song

1388 Words3 Pages

"A Cradle Song"

S. Foster Damon's 1947 reading of "A Cradle Song" indicates that most early critics accepted Isaac Watts' Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber as the model for Blake's poem. However, Damon claims that "There is no more resemblance [between the two works]than there must be between any two cradle-songs. He also claims that the designs of the second plate have a "Raphaelesque hardness, which is in this day not pleasant."

Vivian de Sola Pinto acknowledges the connections between "A Cradle Song" and Watts' work made by Damon and others but notes that no critic has yet explored the relationship between Blake's and Watts' work in detail, a task she takes on in her 1957 study. Placing Watts' "A Cradle Hymn" side-by-side with Blake's "A Cradle Song," de Sola Pinto analyzes their thematic and prosodic similarities and differences, ultimately reading Blake's song as the "delogicalization" of Watts' hymn.

In his 1959 reading of "A Cradle Song," Robert F. Gleckner asserts that it is an expression of Blake's concept of moving into the realm of higher innocence citing as evidence that after 1815, Blake always followed "A Cradle Song" with "The Divine Image" in the sequence of Songs of Innocence. Gleckner discusses the movement from "pleasant dreams" and "sweet smiles" to "moans" and "weeping" as the movement from innocence into experience and ultimate innocence, "the hope of mankind" which is "the ultimate negation of self." Gleckner claims that this "song" is actually a "prayer," the same prayer mentioned in "The Divine Image." Hazard Adams' 1963 reading asserts that the poem is both a song and a "prayer for the continued innocence of the child." Adams classifies the poem as one of Blake's lullabies which Adams claims ...

... middle of paper ...

...iam Blake. Cambridge: UP, 1973.

Gleckner, Robert F. The Piper and the Bard: A Study of William Blake. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1959.

Glen, Heather. Vision and Disenchantment: Blake's Songs and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads. Cambridge: UP, 1983.

Hirsch, E.D. Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to William Blake. Chicago: UP, 1964.

Holloway, John. Blake: The Lyric Poet. London: Edward Arnold, Ltd., 1968.

Keynes, Geoffrey. Commentary. Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. By William Blake. 1789,1794. New York: Orion, 1967.

Leader, Zachary. Reading Blake's Songs. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.

Lindsay, David W. Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, Int., 1989.

Ostriker, Alicia. Vision and Verse in William Blake. Madison: U Wisconsin P, 1965.

Show More
Related

  • From Innocence to Experience

    912 Words  | 2 Pages

    While William Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence was written before the French Revolution and Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Experience was written after, creating obvious differences in formal structure; these poems are also uniquely intertwined by telling the same story of children arriving to church on Holy Thursday. However, each gives a different perspective that plays off each other as well the idea of innocence and experience. The idea that innocence is simply a veil that we are not only aware of but use to mask the horrors of the world until we gain enough experience to know that it is better to see the world for simply what it is.

    Read More

  • Innocence and Experience in William Blake's Literature

    493 Words  | 1 Pages

    Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and jealousy Satan wants humans to feel to lure them to Hell. The poems of experience reflect those feelings. This is illustrated by comparing and contrasting A Divine Image to a portion of The Divine Image.

    Read More

  • The Private Memoirs And Confession Of A Justified Sinner Analysis

    1474 Words  | 3 Pages

    From childhood he was unlike those around him. He went to school to study art and found his love of poetry. From his early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions. He spoke of seeing God and the Angels. He married his with Catherine Boucher in 1782. His brother, Robert died, but this is where Blake got a lot of inspiration for his work. In 1789 Blake wrote and illustrated the popular Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in 1794. His poetry was extremely non-conformist and focused on imagination, rather than reason. Both works have many common parallels and themes. His poetry also deals with the common aspect of a romanticism work; it has moments of sin, suffering and salvation. In Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper, it is a heartbreaking poem about the young children that were forced into doing labor as chimneysweepers. Mostly because they were the only ones small enough to fit in the spaces and they were sold into that work. It was damaging and cruel how they treated these children and Blake writes about it in such a powerful way. In the first stanza alone the reader learns about the difficult life and the suffering this child has had to overcome, “When my mother died when I was young, my father sold me while yet my tongue…so, your Chimney’s I sweep and in soot I sleep.” (Songs of Innocence) This poor child is portrayed so innocently and gentle, yet leads this suffering unfortunate life. People treated

    Read More

  • The Violation of William Blake's Songs of Innocence

    2435 Words  | 5 Pages

    Abstract: William Blake's Songs of Innocence contains a group of poetic works that the artist conceptualized as entering into a dialogue with each other and with the works in his companion work, Songs of Experience. He also saw each of the poems in Innocence as operating as part of an artistic whole creation that was encompassed by the poems and images on the plates he used to print these works. While Blake exercised a fanatical degree of control over his publications during his lifetime, after his death his poems became popular and were encountered without the contextual material that he intended to accompany them.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Songs Of Innocence

    815 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Blake’s poem “The Lamb” from Songs of Innocence, Blake proves that in order to keep innocence alive, a child must not question. It is in a child’s nature to trust all that has been told. Therefore the lamb represents childhood as well as innocence. The lamb is personified as being a gentle creature without sin, and the poem itself is characterized by pleasant light imagery. This imagery is an indicator that innocence is a desired state of being. In the first stanza of the poem, the narrator asks questions regarding

    Read More

  • The Mental Traveller by William Blake

    1708 Words  | 4 Pages

    William Blake is a literature genius. Most of his work speaks volume to the readers. Blake’s poem “The Mental Traveller” features a conflict between a male and female that all readers can relate to because of the lessons learned as you read. The poet William Blake isn’t just known for just writing. He was also a well-known painter and a printmaker. Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry. His poems are from the Romantic age (The end of the 18th Century). He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain. He was the third of seven children. Even though Blake was such an inspiration as a writer he only went to school just enough to read and write. According to Bloom’s critical views on William Blake; one of Blake’s inspirations was the Bible because he believed and belonged to the Moravian Church.

    Read More

  • Anaysis of William Blake's The Lamb, The Tyger, and Proverbs of Hell

    1165 Words  | 3 Pages

    Blake, William. The. “The Lamb.” Poetry Foundation. Web.

    Read More

  • Songs about Life

    699 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789 and 1794), William Blake arouses readers' minds and leads them into a path of finding their own answers and conclusions to his poems. He sets up his poems in the first book, Songs of Innocence, with a few questions as if they were asked from a child's perspective since children are considered the closest representation of innocence in life. However, in the second book, Songs of Experience, Blake's continues to write his poems about thought-provoking concepts except the concepts happen to be a little bit more complex and relevant to experience and time than Songs of Innocence.

    Read More

  • Rebellion As Art By William Blake

    2117 Words  | 5 Pages

    One of Blake’s most famous works is The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Expe...

    Read More

  • William Blake: Exposing the Harsh Realties of Life

    1020 Words  | 3 Pages

    Blake was educated at home by his mother, whom he was very fond of. his poem "Cradle Song" was about his memories of his upbringing.

    Read More

  • The Influence of the Bible on William Blake

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    Bloom and Trilling 28-29. Print. The. Blake, William. The. “Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday.”

    Read More

  • Essay on Infant Sorrow by William Blake

    447 Words  | 1 Pages

    Blake also uses sound to deliver the meaning to the poem. The poem starts off with "My mother groaned! my father wept." You can hear the sounds that the parents make when their child has entered this world. Instead of joyful sounds like cheer or cries of joy, Blake chooses words that give a meaning that it is not such a good thing that this baby was brought into this world. The mother may groan because of the pain of delivery, but she also groans because she knows about horrible things in this world that the child will have to go through. The father also weeps for the same reason, he knows that the child is no longer in the safety of the womb, but now is in the world to face many trials and tribulations.

    Read More

  • The Poem Spring in Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience

    729 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake differentiates between being experienced and being innocent. In the poem "Spring," the speaker focuses on the coming of spring and the excitement surrounding it which is emphasized by the trochaic meter of the poem. Everyone, including the animals and children, is joyful and getting ready for the new season, a season of rebirth and a new arrival of nature’s gifts.

    Read More

  • If the Romantic poet is as William Wordsworth said a man speaking to men

    1725 Words  | 4 Pages

    by different names and as a separate category, highlighting their. differences. The. Children to Blake are extremely important, especially in the context of poetry, indeed in "The Introduction to Songs of Innocence. He says that the poems are "for children to hear" and concentrates on a child's view of life. It is not possible to say that Blake's poetry excludes women and children as so many of his poems are.

    Read More

  • Childhood

    1788 Words  | 4 Pages

    Although both Blake and Wordsworth show childhood as a state of greater innocence and spiritual vision, their view of its relationship with adulthood differs - Blake believes that childhood is crushed by adulthood, whereas Wordsworth sees childhood living on within the adult. In the William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the vision of children and adults is placed in opposition to one another. Blake portrays childhood as a time of optimism and positivity, of heightened connection with the natural world, and where joy is the overpowering emotion. This joyful nature is shown in Infant Joy, where the speaker, a newborn baby, states “’I am happy, Joy is my name.’” (Line 4-5).

    Read More

More about A Reading of Blake's A Cradle Song

Open Document