William Blake 純真與經驗之歌

Songs of Innocence: Holy Thursday

Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green,
Grey headed beadles walk’d before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow.

Oh what a multitude they seem’d, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

Summary

The poem describes the annual Holy Thursday (Ascension Day) service in St Paul’s Cathedral for the poor children of the London charity schools. The children enter the cathedral in strict order ‘walking two and two’ behind the beadles (wardens). The children sit and sing, and their voices rise up to heaven far above their aged guardians. The poem ends with a moral: have pity on those less fortunate than yourself, as they include angelic boys and girls like those described here.

Analysis

The poem is based on the contrast between the ‘innocent faces’ of the children and the authority of the ‘grey headed beadles’ and the other ‘aged men’ who act as their guardians. Although the children are made to enter the cathedral in regimented order, their angelic innocence overcomes all the constraints put upon them by authority – they even make the ‘red and blue and green’ of their school uniforms look like ‘flowers of London town’. As the boys and girls raise their hands and their voices to heaven, the narrator imagines them rising up to heaven too, just as Christ himself did on Ascension Day. In the poet’s vision they leave their ‘wise Guardians’ beneath them and become angels – which is why the last line tells us to ‘cherish pity’ and remember our duty to the poor. Although the triple repetition of ‘multitude(s)’ notes how many thousands of children live in poverty in London, the emphasis in this poem is on the ‘radiance’ which they bring to the church – they are ‘multitudes of lambs’. In the contrary Songs of Experience, Blake provides an opposing opinion and a social critique: ‘And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty’.

Songs of Innocence: The Little Black Boy

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav’d of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say.
Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.
Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:
Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.

Summary

In this poem, Blake imagines the voice of a child. This young narrator insists that though his exterior is black, inside his soul is as white (or "pure") as the angelic-looking child. His mother taught him that this life is only a period of trial and preparation, in which he will learn to bear the ‘beams of love’ emanating from the sun where ‘God does live’. In God’s kingdom, however, he and the white boy will play around God’s tent like innocent lambs. The black boy will become like the white boy, who in turn will learn to love his black counterpart.

Analysis

The poem suggests that physical existence, specifically skin colour, is unimportant compared to the life of the spirit. Different skin colours are described as ‘clouds’ that interfere with the sun’s rays (God’s love), dulling our perception of the things all people have in common. However, Blake also contrasts black and white repeatedly throughout the work. Reflecting the racist European conventions of the period, the poem associates whiteness with enlightenment and purity, and blackness with physicality and ignorance. It is impossible to say whether Blake is endorsing or questioning this viewpoint.

Songs of Innocence: The Chimney Sweeper

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry ’ ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!’
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said,
‘Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.’
And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

Summary

The child tells how his father sold him to a master chimney sweeper when he was so young that he could not even pronounce the words ‘sweep, sweep’ (the traditional street cry which chimney sweeps called out to advertise their presence). The boy comforts Tom Dacre, another sweep whose blond hair has just been shaved off. Tom goes to sleep and dreams that an angel sets free all the sweeps so they can run, play and swim freely in the innocence of youth. The angel tells Tom that if he is a ‘good boy’ God will love him and he will never ‘want joy’ (lack happiness). Tom awakes, warm and cheerful, and the poem ends with the moral: ‘So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm’.

Analysis

In Blake’s time, poor parents often sold their children as ‘climbing boys’ to a master sweep at around the age of five. The boys were forced up narrow, winding chimneys to clean them of soot. Some suffocated inside the chimneys they were trying to clean. Others grew up stunted and deformed, dying at a young age from cancer or lung diseases. Tom Dacre’s dream shows just how horrible this life was for the boys by contrasting it with what they should have been doing at this tender stage in their lives: ‘leaping’ and ‘laughing’ in the sunshine. The moral at the end of the poem is the statement of the young sweep who narrates the poem. Obviously it is nonsense: the climbing boys all ‘do their duty’ but still come to great harm. Yet the sweep is just innocently repeating the moral code which he has been taught by society. The poem thus holds a mirror up to its readers: it is you who deceive children with this false morality, just as it is ‘your chimneys’ (verse 1, line 4) that are responsible for having boy sweeps in the first place.

Songs of Experience: Holy Thursday

Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
And their sun does never shine,
And their fields are bleak and bare,
And their ways are filled with thorns:
It is eternal winter there.
For where’er the sun does shine,
And where’er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.

Summary

The narrator considers it a scandal that a country as ‘rich and fruitful’ as England condemns so many of its children to live in poverty. Indeed, the second verse corrects the first: England cannot be called ‘rich’ when there are such huge numbers

茶葉紛紛寫滿詩歌歲月