“On Another’s Sorrow” by William Blake deals with the question of whether or not people share another’s grief. It uses repetition to show all the times people share another person’s feelings of sorrow. The poem can be divided into three general sections. The first part is about empathy among humans. The second section discusses the extent of Gods depth of empathy for all creatures. The last section covers the things God gave us to deal with sorrow. The biggest point of the poem is God’s unwavering role in our hardships.
Throughout the poem, the speaker uses the rhetorical question “Can…” In lines 1-6, the speaker is talking in first person and is asking “Can I? Can I see another’s woe/ And not be in sorrow too./ Can I see another’s grief/ And not seek for a kind relief.” The answer to these questions is no. Through the repetition of rhetorical questions, Blake shows the all humans feel empathy, and are bound to feel the pain of the people around them. “No, never can it be” is the answer to all the rhetorical questions, and means no person can go without feeling empathy for someone else (11).
Blake also uses third person point of view in his rhetorical questions to apply to another large number of people, parents. In lines 7-20, the author discusses the different ways in which parents feel compassion for their children. Lines 9-12 ask “Can a mother sit and hear/ Can a father see his child/ Weep, nor be filled with sorrow/ No never can it be.” Blake is stating that a mother can never hear her child crying or whimpering with fear and not do something to comfort the child. He states that it would be wrong for a parent to see their child in distress and not move to comfort them.
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....” In this stanza, Blake means that no matter where someone is, or how big or small their suffering, God is going to be right by their side going through the same emotion, because he feels empathy for us. Because God loves every living thing so much “He gives to us his joy/ That our grief he may destroy”, which is the authors way of saying God loves everyone so much, he will literally give us his happiness, to remove our sorrow (33-34).
This poem shows that all people feel empathy for other people, and we receive this emotion from God, who shares in the suffering of every single living creature, no matter how small. God does not give preference to the sorrow one person, but rather in there say and night through every struggle of every creature. Blake uses rhetorical questions to call into light questions people know the answer too, but are sometime to blind to see.
The poem is written in the father’s point of view; this gives insight of the father’s character and
However, keep in mind that this poem was published in 1794. A renowned movement in history had just taken place a few years before this poem was published. That movement was The First Great Awakening. Christine Heyrman of The Univeristy of Delaware describes the First Great Awakening as “a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s.” (Heyrnman 1). This means that just before Blake published his poem, a revamping of Christian culture was being taken place in The United States. This is essential information to keep in mind because Blake, less than thirty years later, questions Christianity in its entirety through a poem called “The
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.
This is as Blake is. aware of everything that goes on in the society, and the poem clearly expresses his repulsiveness towards the political oppression imposed by the monarchy. However, Blake does not solely blame the monarcy, but he does. also the people of his country. This is because he saw all the other countries that previously suffered the oppression of a monarchy, fight.
In lines 4 – 8 when Blake writes, “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.’ These lines symbolize faith in the biblical sense. Young Tom’s is like that of the sacrificial lamb of God and when the narrator tells Tom to stop crying because he knows that the soot can not longer spoil his white hair he, is saying to Tom, once he makes this sacrifice nothing else can hurt him. Blake is saying that if the children make the sacrifice of living out their lives here on Earth, no matter how dark and dismal their lives may seem at the time, they will be rewarded in heaven as long as they know the glory of God and trust in him.
In one of the illustrations, the Little Black Boy is still black when he meets God even though in the poem he claims that color will no longer matter. The way that they are standing is very interesting too because the poem suggests that they will be equal, but the Little Black Boy is described as standing behind the child and in the picture, he is standing behind the white boy. This could be another example of Blake showing how innocent people and naïve people are close to the same thing. The boy thinks one way, but Blake is showing the reader the way things really are through his
A Divine Image gives human characteristics to the feelings of cruelty, jealousy, terror, and secrecy. The poem begins, "Cruelty has a human heart...
There are two kinds of people in the world, lambs and tigers. The lambs are the young and inexperienced, they have no greater knowledge of the harmful world around them, nor do they obtain any knowledge of true evil. Just like the animal itself, cute, calm, peaceful and non-violent. The tigers on the other hand have witness and experienced the horrors of the world around them; they have lived through horrors and hardships that have caused them to evolve from lambs to tigers. The times are tough in the time period of William Blake. In these two groups, the people are classified by either a lamb or a tiger. William Blake wrote two poems in his life; one called “The Lamb” the other call, “The Tyger.” These two poems were classified into two groups, one call the Songs of Innocence, the other call the Songs of Experience. The poem, “The Lamb” fits into Songs of Innocence due it is simplistic views and easy language, while the poem, “The Tyger” fits into Songs of Experience due to is tone and fear.
This lack of action continuously emphasizes the lack of empathy and care of the narrators and highlights to the reader the importance of acting differently from them. Through both of these poems the reader is shown that everyone faces struggles and how important it is to help others in their times of need because they too will face them at some
... I enjoyed the poem. Blake keeps the reader fascinated with not only the structure and literary analysis aspect, but also with the taboo message of the laws of morality organized religion puts on our society. I admire Blake because he was truly ahead of his time in his thinking about free love and spirituality. Considering how controversial the discussion of the laws of morality is today, is isn’t a wonder that his work went largely unnoticed in his time. This poem has opened my eyes, and made me question the legitimacy of all the briars that bind to my joys and desires.
...ofession is viewed as a joke to Blake and we can see this here. This whole idea is exacerbated by the use of imagery present in the poem that is achieved through the use of dark imagery. This attitude of the poet is against the one of the speaker who believes he is innocent and free and had the ability to play around and display hope in his dreams.
In his work, Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, William Blake uses the aforementioned contrasting states of being to illustrate his unique view of the world around him. Through this work, Blake lays bare his soulful views of religion and ethics, daring the reader to continue on in their narcissistic attitudes and self-serving politics. While Blake's work had countless themes, some of the most prevalent were religious reform, social change, and morality. Philosophically, one would think that William Blake was a Deist; however Blake rejected the Deist view of life. He was a devout Christian, yet he also wanted nothing to do with the church or their teachings. These views give Blake a refreshingly sincere quality with regards to his art and writings. Blake frequently alluded to Biblical teachings in his work and, more often than not, used corresponding story lines to rail against the Church's views and accepted practices. One may say however, that Blake's universal appeal lies within his social commentary. Similar to a fable, Blake weaves a poetically mystical journey for the reader, usually culminating in a moral lesson. One such poem, "A Poison Tree," clearly illustrates some of William Blake's moral beliefs. With his use of imagery, as well as an instinctive knowledge of human nature, William Blake shows just how one goes from the light to the darkness (from innocence to experience) by the repression of emotions.
William Blake's poems show the good and bad of the world by discusses the creator and the place of heaven through the views of Innocence and Experience while showing the views with a childlike quality or with misery.
The tone in the first 11 stanzas of the poem seems very resigned; the speaker has accepted that the world is moving on without them. They says things like “I don’t reproach the spring for starting up again” and “I don’t resent the view for its vista of a sun-dazzled bay”. By using words like “resent” and “reproach”, the author indirectly implies that the speaker has a reason to dislike beautiful things. The grief that has affected the speaker so much hasn’t affected life itself and they has come to accept that. The author chooses to use phrases like ‘it doesn’t pain me to see” and “I respect their right” which show how the speaker has completely detached themself from the word around them. While everything outside is starting to come back to life, the speaker is anything but lively. “I expect nothing from the depths near the woods.” They don’t expect anything from the world and want the world to do the same thing in return. This detachment proves that the speaker feels resigned about themself and the world around
Emotions are evoked with the aim to free persons from disturbing emotions. In instances of pity and fear persons tend to accumulate these feelings, which is harmful to the soul. In tragedy, however, whatever sufferings witnessed are not in our control and these emotions are easily released thereby relieve the excess in our souls. Tragedy transforms these distressing emotions into “calm of mind”, thus, the emotional appeal of poetry leads to pleasure. In addition, esthetic emotion in poetry translates to pleasure. The reader and the listener of the poem are prompted through figurative language to visualize what is in the real world. The vividness of the imaginary world that is experienced by the reader, poet and listener generates to a new spiritual knowledge or understanding which gives pleasure (Berlant, p.189). To add on, melancholy as an aesthetic emotion is a source of pleasure. Melancholy involves a variety of emotions; a yearning, sadness, feeling uplifted and even an elusive excitement. It has both pleasure and displeasure aspects. The displeasure aspect lies in the feeling of grief, fear of the unknown, loneliness and emptiness. The pleasurable aspect is entirely about reflecting on elaborate illusion and happy memories. Melancholy is therefore deliberately pursued by finding seclusion. In seclusion reflection is deepened which in turn prolongs the pleasure. Dylan in his poem reveals instances of melancholy Gale, Cengage Learning,