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In the poem” The Angel” William Blake, the author is trying to explain his poem in differents tones, he’s is confused.
At first glance at the title one would assume this might be a religious poem, However, like most poetry, one should never assume a literal meaning, The style of the poem is what mostly struck my attention, The poem lines are short and direct without any intended tone. I found the most emotion in at the beginning and middle of the poem. The use of the exclamation used in the beginning heightened the speaker’s tone. Blake is attempting to gain the audience’s attention in the first line similar to how a poet would in a sonnet. In addition there is a shift in the poem around line 9 similar to the a shift in an Spenserian sonnet.
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.
Blake’s poetry focuses on imagination. When Blake created his work, it gained very little attention. Blake’s artistic and poetic vision is reflected in his creations. Blake was against the Church of England because he thought the doctrines were being misused as a form of social control, it meant the people were taught to be passively obedient and accept oppression, poverty, and inequality. In Blake’s poems “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and Proverbs of Hell, he shows that good requires evil in order to exist through imagery of animals and man.
becomes slightly more serene and peaceful. Here, the tone of the poem is changed to a
It is in lines 10 – 24 that the poem becomes one of hope. For when Blake writes “As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and 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 and set them all free;” Blake’s words ring true of hope for the sw...
Shift: The shift in this poem occurs at the second to last line. Before this, the poem revolves around the, what seems to be, ideal life of Richard Cory. But at this line the poem ends abruptly with an unexpected suicide, stated as an understatement.
Shifts: The largest and most significant shift is in fact, the final line of the poem. Beginning with
Blake had an uncanny ability to use his work to illustrate the unpleasant and often painful realities around him. His poetry consistently embodies an attitude of revolt against the abuse of class and power that appears guided by a unique brand of spirituality. His spiritual beliefs reached outside the boundaries of religious elites loyal to the monarchy. “He was inspired by dissident religious ideas rooted in the thinking of the most radical opponents of the monarchy during the English Civil War “(E. P. Thompson). Concern with war and the blighting effects of the industrial revolution were displayed in much of his work.
In the last line of the second stanza, the subject enters dramatically, accompanied by an abrupt change in the rhythm of the poem:
The theme of authority is possibly the most important theme and the most popular theme concerning William Blake’s poetry. Blake explores authority in a variety of different ways particularly through religion, education and God. Blake was profoundly concerned with the concept of social justice. He was also profoundly a religious man. His dissenting background led him to view the power structures and legalism that surrounded religious establishments with distrust. He saw these as unwarranted controls over the freedom of the individual and contrary to the nature of a God of liberty. Figures such as the school master in the ‘schoolboy’, the parents in the ‘chimney sweeper’ poems, the guardians of the poor in the ‘Holy Thursday’, Ona’s father in ‘A Little girl lost’ and the priestly representatives of organised religion in many of the poems, are for Blake the embodiment of evil restriction.
This change in tone echoes the emotions and mental state of the narrator. At the beginning of the poem, the narrator starts somewhat nervous. However, at the end, he is left insane and delusional. When he hears a knocking at the door, he logically pieces that it is most likely a visitor at the door.
William Blake's The Sick Rose. "The sick rose" is a very ambiguous poem and open to several interpretations, Blake uses lots of imagery and. effective metaphors. My first impression of the poem was that it?s very negative and includes elements of destruction.
There is a wealth of imagery in the first two lines alone. The poem begins:
The poem further describes how Tom has the option to “be a good boy,” and God would become his father, and he would no longer need to find happiness, as he would be happy in simply the presence of God. Here, and throughout the entire poem, Blake expresses his strong spiritual belief in God and how he can brighten up even the darkest of
William Blake delivered his views of religion in this poem to criticize the slave-trade. Blake believed that all humans were equal because all humans were made in God’s image. When he said “…. There God does live and gives his light, and gives his heat away” (Blake 9-10), he was expressing the idea that the whole world is equal because God made them all and placed them in one place to interact with each
...reedom and free will. The poem, “The Little Black Boy”, was written as the poet’s response to the evils prevailing in the society at that point of time like child labour. The poet’s ability to holistically view the universe is evident when he describes earth as “a little space”. This is a direct contradiction to the geocentric theory that the Church propagated at a point of time. Traces of the Bible are found in this poem too, in the use of words such as “lambs”. If one were to point at a trademark feature of Blake’s poetry, it would be the description of simple elements of nature in splendid, yet facile language with subtle echoes of concepts, events or people in Christianity and the Bible. His poetry uses images and illustrations to the effect that the readers are able to visually imagine the anecdotes and occurrences in the Bible and hence enjoy them better.