William Blake

The Human Abstract

Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor:
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;
And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.
He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.
Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.
And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.
The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain

Summary
This poem offers a closer analysis of the four virtuesMercy, Pity, Peace, and Lovethat
constituted both God and Man in The Divine Image. The speaker argues that Pity could not
exist without poverty, that Mercy would not be necessary if everyone was happy, that the
source of Peace is in fear, which gives rise to only selfish loves. The poem describes how

Cruelty plants and waters a tree in the human Brain. The roots of the tree are Humility, the
leaves are Mystery, and the fruit is Deceit.
Commentary
This poem asserts that the traditional Christian virtues of mercy and pity presuppose a world
of poverty and human suffering; so, too, do the virtues represent a kind of passive and
resigned sympathy that registers no obligation to alleviate suffering or create a more just
world. The speaker therefore refuses to think of them as ideals, reasoning that in an ideal
world of universal happiness and genuine love there would be no need of them. The poem
begins as a methodical critique of the touchstone virtues that were so praised in The Divine
Image. Proceeding through Pity, Mercy, and Peace, the poem then arrives at the phrase
selfish loves. These clearly differ from Love as an innocent abstraction, and the poem
takes a turn here to explore the growth, both insidious and organic, of a system of values
based on fear, hypocrisy, repression, and stagnation.
The description of the tree in the second part of the poem shows how intellectualized values
like Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love become the breeding-ground for Cruelty. The speaker
depicts Cruelty as a conniving and knowing person; in planting a tree, he also lays a trap.
His tree flourishes on fear and weeping; Humility is its root, Mystery its foliage; but this
growth is not natural; it does not reflect upon the natural state of man. Rather, the tree is
associated with Deceit, and its branches harbor the raven, the symbol of death. By the end
of the poem we realize that the above description has been a glimpse into the human mind,
the mental experience. Thus the poem comments on the way abstract reasoning
undermines a more natural system of values. The result is a grotesque semblance of the
organic, a tree that grows nowhere in nature but lies sequestered secretly in the human
brain.
William Blake

The Lamb

Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee

Gave thee life & bid thee feed.

By the stream & oer the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Little Lamb Ill tell thee,
Little Lamb Ill tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.

Summary
The poem begins with the question, Little Lamb, who made thee? The speaker, a child,
asks the lamb about its origins: how it came into being, how it acquired its particular manner
of feeding, its clothing of wool, its tender voice. In the next stanza, the speaker attempts a
riddling answer to his own question: the lamb was made by one who calls himself a Lamb,
one who resembles in his gentleness both the child and the lamb. The poem ends with the
child bestowing a blessing on the lamb.

Commentary
The poem is a childs song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza is rural
and descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains
explanation and analogy. The childs question is both naive and profound. The question
(who made thee?) is a simple one, and yet the child is also tapping into the deep and
timeless questions that all human beings have, about their own origins and the nature of

creation. The poems apostrophic form contributes to the effect of naivet, since the situation
of a child talking to an animal is a believable one, and not simply a literary contrivance. Yet
by answering his own question, the child converts it into a rhetorical one, thus counteracting
the initial spontaneous sense of the poem. The answer is presented as a puzzle or riddle,
and even though it is an easy onechilds playthis also contributes to an underlying
sense of ironic knowingness or artifice in the poem. The childs answer, however, reveals his
confidence in his simple Christian faith and his innocent acceptance of its teachings.
The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb
underscores the Christian values of gentleness, meekness, and peace. The image of the
child is also associated with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for
children, and the Bibles depiction of Jesus in his childhood shows him as guileless and
vulnerable. These are also the characteristics from which the child-speaker approaches the
ideas of nature and of God. This poem, like many of the Songs of Innocence, accepts what
Blake saw as the more positive aspects of conventional Christian belief. But it does not
provide a completely adequate doctrine, because it fails to account for the presence of
suffering and evil in the world. The pendant (or companion) poem to this one, found in
the Songs of Experience, is The Tyger; taken together, the two poems give a perspective
on religion that includes the good and clear as well as the terrible and inscrutable. These
poems complement each other to produce a fuller account than either offers independently.
They offer a good instance of how Blake himself stands somewhere outside the
perspectives of innocence and experience he projects.

The poems of William Blake reinterpret the spiritual history of the human race from
the fall from Eden to the beginning of the French Revolution. Blake believed in the
correspondence between the physical world and the spiritual world and used poetic
metaphor to express these beliefs. In his poetry, we hear a man who look's for
mankind to salvage his redemption from oppression through resurgence of
imaginative life. The power of repression is a constant theme in Blake's poems and
he articulates his belief in the titanic forces of revolt and the struggle for freedom
against the guardians of tradition.
All Religions Are One & There Is No Natural Religion -- Blake argues that every
religion, and all sects of philosophy, originated in Gods revelation but that that
revelation is then filtered through human consciousness. Therefore, each creed

taken on by humankind adopts a human characteristic that has been superimposed

with a divine essence. He alludes to our impulses that cannot be gained from
experience, and our longing for the infinite, which goes against the laws of nature, as
support for his thesis. Blake concludes that the universe within which we live is
infinite and will become too vast to comprehend, which will lead us to a wearisome
and mentally defeated state.

The cycle
Cycle is very similar to the theme of opposition. Where Blake argues each
object or abstract idea has an equal and valid opposite form, he also
contends that nature of these objects and abstractions pass back and forth
through one another. Most obvious in The Season poems studied here, but
also in many other works of Blake, the reader learns of his static belief that
nature operates in cyclical terms. William Blake would use this theory as
evidential support for the changes of his time, especially the Revolutions that
were happening in America and France. Frustrated with a long period of
repression in Europe, Blake felt it was time for the people to rise and fight
back, and that a political and philosophical cleansing was not only a positive
part to the progression of mankind and evolution of societies, but that it was
as natural as the rotation of the earth, the changing of the seasons, and the
maturity of humans.

Oppression / Repression
Blake lived in a period of aggressive British colonialism, slavery, social
casting, Revolutionary change in America and Europe, as well as the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Being a member of the lower class, an
uneducated artist (in the formal sense of the term, although Blake was
clearly quite intelligent), and considered by many to be an inferior poet
bordering madness, Blake experienced firsthand the struggles of oppression.
Using words and illustrations, Blake fought back against his countrymen,
political leaders, and religious principals(ples). The theme of the repressed is
the easiest to identify and extract from Blakes poetry. Most all of his work
will feature a wearisome protagonist who is attempting to revolt against
some greater being, whether it be politically, religious, or even the shackles
of love and marriage. Many times, this theme is represented in the form of
mythology, literary allusion, and the personification of natural objects.

Innocence and Experience

Similar to Blakes focus on mans fall from grace, Blake was constantly exploring the
moment of lost innocence. This repeated theme in Blakes poetry is almost like a
paragon for a combination of all the other themes so far discussed. The theme of the
separation, transition, and difference between innocence and experience is
highlights the theory of opposition, cycling, repression, and sexuality. Songs of
Innocence and Experience aside (which can be found in a separate Grade Saver
Note), Blake continues to explore and personify this transient moment and
investigate its consequences. Recognizing that in a world of reason or sensibility
we risk forgetting all of our primitive desires and suppressing all of our natural
intuitions. Blake attempt to invoke recognition for the imaginative spirit that lies in all
of us, but since our moment of experience, has been subjugated to the areas of our
mind we are called upon to ignore.