William Blake 1757-1827, Artist, Painter and Poet.
This man spent almost his entire life in the black hole that was London of the eighteenth century. This was a London where the Thames was foul with rotting sewage and approximately 30 poor souls died of starvation every week. Not the elegant eighteenth century usually depicted in books and films. This was a London where a mere handful of wealthy residents enjoyed the fresh air and the pleasant spacious homes of the west, a region that is now Regent Street. The rest of the wretched poverty stricken people existed on the edge of brothels, sewers, gin houses and burial grounds.
The Tyger, (1794) is a powerful piece of writing, very different to ‘The Little Black Boy,(1789) but both are storied aimed mostly for children from Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence ‘ series.
The Poem ‘The Little Black Boy’ leaves you feeling so sorry for the poor child who believes (in the Poem) one day he will be white and every one will love him. How much of this child’s pain was actually observed and empathised by Blake; and how much was his own interpretation of the situation, an interpretation necessarily coloured by his own time and place in history, we cannot possibly know. But we can know, from the way this is written, that even if his interpretation of the child’s emotional response to the world is inaccurate, it is well intended and kindly.
If you read ‘The Tyger’ after reading ‘The Little Black Boy’ you feel a transition of emotion. The little Black Boy leaves a feeling of compassionate naivety but follow that with The Tyger and the soft compassionate naivety disappears and in replaced by the reality of the fearless Tyger tracking and attacking its helpless prey. A brave, beautiful, fearless but cruel tiger.
William Blake, Poet and Artist; how nice to be able to illustrate a poem with the authors own original illustrations.
William Blake (1757-1827)
The Little Black Boy
1 My mother bore me in the southern wild,
2 And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
3 White as an angel is the English child,
4 But I am black, as if bereav'd of light.
5 My mother taught me underneath a tree,
6 And sitting down before the heat of day,
7 She took me on her lap and kissed me,
8 And pointing to the east, began to say:
9 Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
10 And gives his light, and gives his heat away;
11 And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
12 Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
13 And we are put on earth a little space,
14 That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
15 And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
16 Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
17 For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,
18 The cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice,
19 Saying: 'Come out from the grove, my love and care,
20 And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.' "
21 Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
22 And thus I say to little English boy,
23 When I from black and he from white cloud free,
24 And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,
25 I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear
26 To lean in joy upon our father's knee;
27 And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
28 And be like him, and he will then love me.
The Tiger
1 Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
2 In the forest of the night
3 What immortal hand or eye
4 Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
5 In what distant deeps or skies
6 Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
7 On what wings dare he aspire?
8 What the hand dare seize the fire?
9 And What shoulder, and what art,
10 Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
11 And when thy heart began to beat,
12 What dread hand? and what dread feet?
13 What the hammer? what the chain?
14 In what furnace was thy brain?
15 What the anvil? what dread grasp
16 Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
17 When the stars threw down their spears,
18 And watered heaven with their tears,
19 Did he smile his work to see?
20 Did he who made the lamb make thee?
21 Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
22 In the forests of the night,
23 What immortal hand or eye
24 Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
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