We could take these events to speculate that Blake was aware of the complexities of his poetry, and that this style of writing was necessary to avoid any unfair treatment from those who did not agree or approve of his underlying meanings.
‘The Garden of Love’ clearly shows how Blake regarded the restrictions of the church as ‘the gates were shut’ and “Though shalt not’ writ over the door;” This poem could be reminiscent of where Blake played as a child, possibly showing that with adulthood comes loss, as ‘Priests with black gowns’ [are] binding [his] joys and desires’. Blake’s recurring use of ‘black’ when describing priests throughout the Songs and in particular ‘tomb-stones’, could symbolise despair and mourning. When looking at the accompanying artwork, this sense of loss and death could be related to youth, freedom and innocence, as two children kneel next to a priest over an open grave.
According to Duncan Wu 2 ‘Blakean innocence entails a complex mixture of qualities including unfettered energy, simplicity, love and spontaneity’ These things juxtapose Blake’s view of religion and the governments social control, as we see in ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ in Innocence, where Tom Dacre’s only comfort is in death where he will have ‘God for his father and never want joy.’ Blake’s celestial language and use of nature as escapism is the only light in this haunting poem that tells of a young boy sold for child slavery in a society that permitted the selling of children and the buying of slaves. The influence and power of religion had so much control that it even influences the naive child’s dreams. We could presume that the church justified this treatment of children by supplying the dream of happiness as the ‘Angel told Tom; if he’d be a good boy/ He’d have God for his father.’ This almost denotes moral blackmail for their obedience and suffering.
Blake’s use of dichotomy is apparent in the use of colours with ‘coffins of black’ and ‘white hair’, but also the boy’s emotions in these polarities, as Tom Dacre ‘cried’ at having his head shaven, to then be ‘leaping’ and ‘laughing’. The fourth stanza describes the boys being cleansed by nature; they ‘wash in the river, and shine in the sun,’ which creates an image of how Blake possibly viewed nature, childhood and innocence as intertwined. In the ‘Experience’ poem of the same name, the child tells the ambiguous voice when asked of his parent’s whereabouts that they have ‘gone up to the church to pray’. This irony is unmistakable as this child’s treatment is surely unforgivable, and we could assume that the ‘clothes of death’ are of a thin material that is inadequate to sustain warmth during winter. The many injustices that Blake underpins in his poetry are sometimes hard to ignore or excuse, making the question of whether he was consciously writing with irony in mind an on going debate.
We could speculate further when looking at ‘A Cradle Song’, which also denotes escapism in sleep, as we can almost hear ‘soft moans’ and ‘sweeter smiles’ of a baby in this rhythmic lullaby. The entrancing rhythm almost hides Blake’s possibly intended message to ‘chase not slumber from thy eyes,’ as the child’s fate and inevitable corruption of human nature are waiting, as marked by the mothers weeping.
The misery of children can be heard again in ‘Holy Thursday’ in ‘Songs of Experience’, as the reader is asked whether the children are singing ‘a song of joy’ or a ‘trembling cry’ due to their ‘misery’. Blake’s consistent irony is similar to ‘The Chimney Sweep’, as the children are worshipping a God that has been shaped by society to allow child slavery and ‘babes reduced to misery’ with the justification of a ‘made up heaven’. Blake’s rhetorical questions in ‘Holy Thursday’ from ‘Innocence’ enhance the ironic view that in a ‘rich and fruitful land’ why are ‘so many children poor’?
From Blake’s recurring theme of religion and ‘black’ monks we can see that the amount of children living in poverty is vast as he compares the children to ‘Thames waters’, and their poverty could be due to the ‘wise guardians of the poor’ who are protecting the church and establishment in a seemingly Marxist society, where the rich stay rich and the poor remain poor and exploited. Blake even asks the reader in the Experience poem; ‘Is this holy thing to see?’ His view of the establishment and its effects on society are underpinned in ‘London’ where in the third stanza he includes the church, the monarchy and the army, and also the chimney sweeper, which could be taken as his thought’s on the class system at the time, as the monarchy concentrated on war while protected and safe inside ‘Palace walls.’
Thomas Paine wrote in 1776 that ‘Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.’ 3
With all the complexities and meanings in Blake’s poems it would be hard to say that his ideal of innocence was not in some way related to childhood, nature and his own views on God and religion, as we know from general reading that Blake was seen as eccentric in his methods of publishing his poetry. The laborious job of creating his poetry on copper plates with accompanying art work was unorthodox in itself, and his admittance as seeing himself as a prophet would surely have led to some speculation regarding his mental health. It is hard to not admire Blake’s work as the poems that seem harmless and without depth are deceptively captivating, his views of innocence, childhood and the concept of God can be summarised by Wordsworth’s ‘Ode; Intimations of Immorality and Recollections of Early Childhood’4
‘But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy…’
Bibliography
1 William Godwin, ‘Political Justice’ in Duncan Wu (ed.), Romanticism: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006{3rd edn}, p.169
2 Ibid, William Blake, p.170
3 Ibid, Thomas Paine, Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, p.24
4 Ibid, William Wordsworth ‘Ode: Intimations of Immorality from Recollections of Early Childhood’ p.539
Abrams, M.H , The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and Critical Tradition,
Oxford University Press,1953
Bloom, Harold & Trilling, Lionel, Romantic Poetry and Prose (Oxford University Press)
Butter, Peter (ed), William Blake, Everyman, 1996
De Man, Paul, Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism: The Gauss Seminar and Other Papers, The John Hopkins University Press, 1993
Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Blackwell, 2008 [3rd edn]
Franklin L. Ford, A General History of Europe 1780-1830, Longman, 1970,
Walder, Dennis, Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents, Oxford University Press, 2004, [2nd edn]
