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English 252: Introduction to Poetry William Blake Study Questions Alfred J. Drake. Hours: Cyber Cafe M/W 10-11 Songs of Innocence, General Questions 1. What do you consider to be the task or purpose of Songs of Innocence? In other words, do the songs teach us anything? If so, what? 2. How is the title phrase "songs of innocence" capable of more than one interpretation? 3. Are adult limitations in understanding different in kind from a child's limitations? What bounds the perceptions of an adult? What bounds the perceptions of a child? "Introduction" 4. What is the child's role in relation to the piper? What does the child want the piper to do? 5. Might the line "I stain'd the water clear" be read in two different ways? If so, how? "The Lamb" 6. How are the child-speaker, the lamb, and Christ "the Lamb" set in relation to one another? Why is it so easy for the child to identify the lamb's creator, and so easy to invoke God's blessing on the lamb? "Holy Thursday" 7. How does the speaker describe the movements of the children? Is this description ambivalent, and is the poem as a whole less innocent-sounding than some of the others? If so, why? What lines or phrases might lead us to that conclusion? "The Divine Image" 8. Why are "mercy, pity, peace, and love" good attributes in this poem? (The poem's contrary is to be found in Songs of Experience, "The Human Abstract") "The Little Black Boy" 9. Where has the child learned that he is "bereaved of light"? How would you characterize his interpretation of his race? 10. How does the child's mother accommodate the boy's understanding and yet correct it? How does she view racial difference? Songs of Experience "Introduction" 11. What is the difference between the "piper" of the introduction to Songs of Innocence and the "Bard" in Songs of Experience? 12. How do you interpret the symbolism of the introduction - its references to "Earth," light and darkness, and the "starry floor / watry shore"? "A Divine Image" 13. Refer to "The Divine Image" in Songs of Innocence. What was Blake saying about the relation between the human and the divine in that poem? How has it changed in "A Divine Image" in Songs of Experience? 14. The Norton editors say that "The Human Abstract" is subtler than this poem. How so? Which poem do you consider a more effective contrary to "The Divine Image" in Songs of Innocence? "Holy Thursday (II)" 15. How has the speaker's perspective changed from the corresponding poem in Songs of Innocence? What allows the speaker to see things differently? 16. What is the "trembling cry"? 17. How do you understand the poem's references to natural things - sun, rain, fields, thorns, etc.? "The Clod and the Pebble" 18. Is the Clod's interpretation of love privileged? Is the Pebble's? 19. What view of love emerges when you try to put both interpretations of it together? "The Sick Rose" 20. What does the worm or caterpillar symbolize? 21. Characterize the unhealthy "sexual economy" (as in "political economy") figured by this poem. 20. Compare this poem with its Innocence predecessor, "The Blossom" if you happen to have a full copy of Songs of Innocence - you can get it from David Erdman's Complete Works of Blake from an offsite hyperlink. "A Poison Tree" 22. What is the "apple," and why does it kill the foe? Why does the foe try to steal the apple? 23. What progression of mental states does the poem trace? What are the material consequences of those successive states? "The Tyger" 24. What emotional progression does the poem imply in the speaker's contemplation of the Tyger? 25. What is the answer to the question in line 20, "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" Why does the speaker need to ask the question? Who is "he," i.e. the lamb's creator? 26. What is the significance of the poem's references to "fire," "burning," and the "furnace"? What does fire often symbolize? 27. Examine the plate on page 55 - describe the Tyger's attributes. What sort of "tiger" is this that Blake has engraved? What effect does the odd spelling "tyger" create? "My Pretty Rose Tree" / "Ah Sun-flower" 28. What two states of love do these poems invoke? "The Garden of Love" 29. Explain the speaker's perspective on morality as a system of oppression. 30. To what extent is the speaker complicit in what is happening? "London" 31. What effects do the poem's insistent particularity and totality have - i.e. "charter'd," "mark," every"? 32. Why is the reference to prostitution the most significant one to the speaker, as we see from the last stanza? Edition: Ferguson, Margaret et al. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. 4th ed. New York: Norton, 1996.
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