Ways in which Blake Uses Images of Animals and Plants
William Blake was born in 1757 in London and died in 1827. His most
famous works are called "Songs of innocence" and "Songs of
experience". "Songs of innocence" written in (1789) were easy to
understand, very simple vocabulary, simple verses, with ideal, happy
and pastoral locations. In Contrast "Songs of experience" written in
(1794), had more difficult ideas and vocabulary, with negative views,
which where realistic and sad. In this essay I will be studying how
Blake uses animals, plants and the natural world to create pictures
for the reader of what he thought life was like in eighteenth century
England. I will be comparing, “The Echoing Green”, “The Garden of
Love” and “Laughing Song”. These poems contain an extensive amount of
visual images of “Green” which will help me compare the different ways
in which Blake uses the images of animals, plants and natural world.
To embark on “The Echoing Green”, this poem is a very calm, joyful and
positive poem. It consists of happy people, happy children and a
beautiful natural landscape, which is pastoral. Pastoral is another
word for the rural location, where there are animals and other natural
life such as trees and plants. At the location there are many
different sporting games in progress and children under the
supervision of parental figures. I can also see from the poem that the
people have been at the location for the entire day as the poem starts
with “The Sun does arise”, and ends with “On the Darkening Green”.
This shows how much they must have enjoyed themselves to be at the
same location for the entire day. The title “The Echoing Green” tells
you that this is a location where communities come a...
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...”Chapel were shut”
showing how the doors to the chapel that was built on the land that
the writer played and how they are now shut to the public, and the
writer could be hinting extreme dislike towards religion. Furthermore
the third stanza backs up this opinion of mine, “I saw it was filled
with graves”, this quote shows how the narrator only noticed the
negative points of the chapel and not the positive religious aspects.
In conclusion, there have been many natural features shown throughout
all three poems. The poem reflects what William Blake thinks of
animals, plants and the natural world. Blake has also described social
aspects within his poems, which creates an unreal texture in “Laughing
Song” and “The Echoing Green”. In contrast “the Garden of love” has
been shielded from social activity as he describes that the gates
towards god are not shut.
On the echoing green.’ This doesn’t suggest that they as children were oppressed. The use of the word ‘joy,’ shows that people were happy to see them playing, and that they were happy too. Blake uses an image of children sitting about their mother’s knee, he writes, ‘Round the laps of their mothers Many sisters and brothers.’ This image of children around their mother’s knee is an image of security and safety.
In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, many of the poems correlate in numerous aspects. For example, The Chimney Sweeper is a key poem in both collections that portrays the soul of a child The Chimney Sweeper in Innocence vs. The Chimney Sweeper in Experience In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, many of the poems correlate in numerous aspects. For example, The Chimney Sweeper is a key poem in both collections that portrays the soul of a child with both a naïve and experienced persona. Blake uses the aspects of religion, light versus dark imagery, and the usage of the chimney sweeper itself to convey the similarities and differences of the figure in both poems. The Chimney Sweeper is an excellent example of how William Blake incorporated religion into his poetic works.
The ideas that are presented in poems are often the same ideas everyone is thinking but are too afraid to speak their mind for fear that they might be judged. Allen Ginsberg explained this predicament when he said “[p]oetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private” (Ginsberg). This quote applies especially to “The Tyger” by William Blake. William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” at the surface is very simplistic; however, with further analysis the story’s theme of religion asks fundamental questions that pertain to one’s worldview with the use of symbolism.
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.
William Blake was born in 1757 and of an early age he wrote poetry, soon enough he became well known to the Church and also the wealthy. Blake was very critical towards the Church despite being a firm believer of God. He thought that the Church were overpowering the poor side of the Country. Blake would get his message through to others in the use of poetry, if people studied the poems they would get a clear idea of Blake's views. William Blake wrote two books which included some of his poems, they were called 'Songs of Innocence' and 'Songs of Experience.' Songs of Innocence was written in 1789, five years earlier than 'Songs of Experience'. This book contains poems of trickery, I say this because if you just read the poems you would think that he is writing about happiness, but if you look harder at each line individually you would see that he is trying to state the unhappiness in the world, the darker side of the poems. The other book 'Songs of Experience' contains some of the same titles of poems but with different contents. If you compare the two books you will see that this book contains the truth about the world, with the misery.
Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and jealousy Satan wants humans to feel to lure them to Hell. The poems of experience reflect those feelings. This is illustrated by comparing and contrasting A Divine Image to a portion of The Divine Image.
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 a Green Night" by Derek Walcott is a poem about the conflicting feelings of life. "In a Green Night" focuses on the ever-present threat of death, and how our lives revolve around the inevitability of death. Through metaphors, paradoxes, and repetition, Walcott exemplifies the hopelessness and glory that occur when an artist realizes that, in his quest for creating the perfect piece of art, he is ultimately growing closer to death--just as an orange tree grows closer to death as it produces its magnificent fruit.
By using syntax, diction, figurative language, imagery and a curious tone, “The Tyger”, by William Blake reveals that the more mysterious something is, the scarier it can be to us. All of these literary devices control the feeling of the theme and help set up this unique poem to make it feel unknown.
Wordsworth and Hopkins both present the reader with a poem conveying the theme of nature. Nature in its variety be it from something as simple as streaked or multicolored skies, long fields and valleys, to things more complex like animals, are all gifts we take for granted. Some never realize the truth of what they are missing by keeping themselves indoors fixating on the loneliness and vacancy of their lives and not on what beauty currently surrounds them. Others tend to relate themselves more to the fact that these lovely gifts are from God and should be praised because of the way his gifts have uplifted our human spirit. Each writer gives us their own ideals as how to find and appreciate nature’s true gifts.
In “Songs of Innocence”, and “Songs of Experience” Blake sets a dismal and gloomy tone. This is accomplished by using words such as “Dark”, “Black”, and “Coffins”; these words provoke a dark and ominous feeling when reading. Also, both poems have a depressed to exuberant tone shift, for example, from line one; the words “crying” and “weep” set a dark tone. Then in line nine the words “happy” and “heaven” shift the tone to a much lighter one.
During the Romantic Era (1750-1870), poets used nature as a common motif as they believed it was an extension of the human being. One such poet, William Blake, famously wrote “And we are put on this earth a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.” A common theme of his writing on the subject of love is the juxtaposition of innocent love and experienced love. For example, both poems, “The Clod and the Pebble” and “The Sick Rose” which first appeared in his book Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1789, generally follow a similar rhyme scheme and development as with all the poems contained within this book. The first half of each poem relates to innocent love, followed by a rhyme scheme discord to represent a turning point,
To illustrate, Blake displays imagery throughout his poem. These descriptions leave a picture in the reader’s mind. With great detail, the
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. Good morning/afternoon ladies, I am William Blake, not Wordsworth; Blake, a romantic poet. I was born in 1757, in the Soho district of London, England. I was not only a poet but also a painter and a printmaker. Since I was young, I had these beautiful ‘visions’. I saw a God’s head appear in a window and a tree filled with angels. You may think I was insane but really, I was not. I lived in the Romantic Period, the period of free emotion, adopting individuality and engrossing oneself in nature. We, the Romantic poets, wanted to change the ideas of the previous period, the Enlightenment. We were sick of the industrial society and the want of reasons and purposes behind everything. We believed that nature and emotion were the places in which one found spiritual truth. The idea of engrossing oneself in the natural and beautiful, or in some cases the natural and frightening as in the poem ‘The Tyger’, is distinctly romantic.
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own” (Blake, 123) The child is the symbol of the most fragile and brave components in the human mind. The characteristics of Romanticism are shown in his poems, for example the sense of wonder and the contemplation of Nature through fresh eyes. Everything that a child sees is mystery and beauty and goodness. The words in these poems fit the thought because he poems are simple. The “Songs of Innocence” most completely covers the definition of Romanticism. In this book, Blake deals with themes of experience and innocence, and on bigger Romantic themes is nature, the body, and sublime. The world of Nature and man full of love and beauty and innocence enjoyed by a happy child. In spite of his powerful emotions and his rare ideas, Blake keeps his structure perfectly clear and