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Pictorial and Poetic Design in Two Songs of Innocence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Thomas E. Connolly  and
George R. Levine
Thomas E. Connolly
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Buffalo
George R. Levine
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Buffalo
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Extract

      The Little Boy lost
      Father, father, where are you going
      O do not walk so fast.
      Speak father, speak to your little boy
      Or else I shall be lost,
      The night was dark no father was there
      The child was wet with dew.
      The mire was deep, & the child did weep
      And away the vapour flew.

      The Little Boy found
      The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
      Led by the wand'ring light,
      Began to cry, but God ever nigh,
      Appeard like his father in white.
      He kissed the child & by the hand led
      And to his mother brought,
      Who in sorrow pale, thro' the lonely dale
      Her little boy weeping sought.

In William Blake's Songs of Innocence appear two tiny, apparently simple poems that have, until recently, attracted relatively little critical attention. Some critics have ignored “The Little Boy lost,” and “The Little Boy found” entirely; others have treated them as relatively insignificant examples of innocence preserved.Several critics are clearly puzzled by the poems: Joseph Wicksteed, for example, finds the disappearance of the vapour in “The Little Boy lost” both mysterious and ultimately inexplicable (pp. 46–47), whereas E. D. Hirsch, Jr., has more recently admitted that the “best symbolic interpretation” of these two poems is “not characteristic of the Songs of Innocence.” Only one critic, Robert Gleckner, has argued for their importance in the Songs of Innocence, but Gleckner has perhaps gone too far in attempting to elevate them to the status of key poems in the Songs of Innocence.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 82 , Issue 2 , May 1967 , pp. 257 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967

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References

1 See, e.g., Mark Schorer, William Blake, The Politics of Vision (New York, 1946); Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton, 1947).

2 See, e.g., Joseph Wicksteed, Blake's Innocence and Experience (London and Toronto, 1928), pp. 46–47, 105–107; David Erdman, Blake: Prophet Against Empire (Princeton, 1954), p. 115; E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake (New Haven and London, 1964), pp. 186–188; Hazard Adams, William Blake: A Reading of the Shorter Poems (Seattle, Wash., 1963), pp. 208–210; Harold Bloom, Blake's Apocalypse (Garden City, N. Y., 1963), pp. 46–47.

3 P. 187. The reference is to Erdman, p. 115.

4 Robert F. Gleckner, The Piper and the Bard (Detroit, Mich., 1959), pp. 98–102.

5 Jean H. Hagstrum, William Blake, Poet and Painter (Chicago, 1964), p. 3.

6 Hirsch suggests that the reference to “no father” in l. 5 implies that the child is looking for a father who is in reality-dead, Although in one sense plausible, this interpretation tends to ignore both the actual presence of the father so clearly implied in ll. 1–2, as well as the reflection in “The Little Boy lost” of the theme of abandonment so prevalent in the Songs of Innocence and Experience. Gleckner goes even further than this by suggesting that at the opening of “The Little Boy lost,” the child is having what amounts to a nightmare. Not only does this suggestion tend to deny the reality of the father, but it denies also the reality of the experience of apparent desertion. The experience may be nightmarish for the child, but it is not merely a bad dream.

7 “A Descriptive Catalogue,” in The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David Erdman, commentary by Harold Bloom (New York, 1965), p. 532.

8 Miriam Starkman, Swift's Satire on Learning in A Tale f a Tub (Princeton, 1950), p. 28.

9 Mona Wilson, Life of Blake (London, 1932), pp. 75–76.

10 M. H. Abrams, “The Correspondent Breeze: A Romantip Metaphor,” English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. M. H. Abrams (New York, 1960), p. 44. See also Gesenius's Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, ed. S. P. Tregelles (New York, 1889), under (ruach), pp. 760–761.

11 See, e.g., the studies by Hirsch and Gleckner cited above.

12 “The Little Black Boy,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” and “Holy Thursday” of Innocence all translate the children in them to heaven. In nearly all the issues of the Songs of Innocence and Experience these five songs are printed together.