The ‘marriage hearse’ concluding Blake’s poem ‘London’ is a vehicle in which love and desire combine with death and destruction. The poem climaxes when the cycle of misery recommences, in the form of a human being starting life: a baby born into poverty, to a cursing, prostitute mother. The baby is doomed to live the imprisoned life of ‘every Man’ and to be burdened with ‘The mind-forged manacles’. The idea of man imprisoning man is developed in Earth’s Answer, where Earth is ‘Chain’d in night’ much like every man in London possessing ‘mind forged manacles’. The poet sees a character suffering in agony that could arise without hindrance if she could only see that she could – if she was not in such despair.
Infant Sorrow shows a similar impending doom to the baby in London. Here, the rhyming couplets and regular structure are used to present a feeling of imprisonment. The baby is an unwanted child, produced in Joylessness and this is the birth of a representative citizen of Blake’s London. It is already in the process of forging its own mental manacles. The child is born out of the mother’s pain, and this pain is accentuated by the misery that the father’s tears suggest. Tears possibly for the extra burden that the child constitutes. Feeling itself in a dangerous world, feeling unwanted and being joyless, it strives against its parents and against the bonds that are immediately applied to it.
Unwanted children are not uncommon in Blake’s poetry. In the poem The Chimney Sweeper of Innocence, the child’s father ‘sold me while yet my ‘tongue could scarcely cry ‘weep!’ ‘weep!’ ‘weep!’’. This phrase highlights how young the child was, and reflects the ‘marks of woe’ explored in ‘London’. The child has been brought into a world, described in Holy Thursday as ‘a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduc’d to misery’. This use of opposite highlights the unfairness of the sweeps situation. Holy Thursday can be used to show Blake’s opinion that nature liberates, because the children are in a land of poverty ‘where their sun does never shine’ – showing the importance of nature in liberation. Nature being used to define liberation is a common technique of Blake’s – In America, the liberated slaves run out into a ‘field’ and laugh in the ‘bright air’.
In Blake’s poetry where nature is used to show liberation, pastoral images like that in America are used. The Blossom explores sexual liberation, celebrating joyous and natural sex and in direct contrast to London where the social consequences of driving sex into secrecy are highlighted – the ‘marriage hearse’ and ‘Harlot’s Curse’. The natural colour ‘green’ has sexual connotations with its vision of the young Blossom anticipating the Sparrow and Robin’s embrace. This poem is an evocation of innocent love, merriment and growth within the natural order. This poem also directly contrasts ‘A Little Girl Lost’ which expresses Blake’s outrage at the denial of natural sexuality ‘Sweet love! Was though a crime.’ Blake believed in free love and liberation, and in this poem he has combined the two with use of natural images.
An idyllic pastoral setting can be found in the Introduction to Innocence, which is a direct celebration of childhood innocence. The setting does lose some of its innocence as the poem ends – the water becomes ‘stain’d’ and the word ‘may’ is indefinite. Equally, the term ‘wept with joy’ is a curious conjunction of extremes’ and hints that innocence has an opposite of contrary world. This has the effect of hinting at the imprisoned world of man, and shows that the liberal springtime vision is transitory and change is inevitable – emphasised by the pure music of a moment’s pleasure changing into written lyrics.
The Shepherd also shows a threat of things changing. The Shepherd’s protection of the sheep is symbolic of God’s protection of man – the human race being looked after. However, it must be noted that the Shepherd strays and not the sheep, and the shepherd’s watchful care if only specified as lasting all the day, implying that the flock may be asserted and terrified at night. The final two lines are linked by the logical conjunction ‘for’, which proposes a conditional relationship between the flock’s peace and the Shepherd being present. In this poem, nature does not represent liberation as the sheep are restricted by the Shepherd – not unlike the Church restricting the people.
Also, the Tyger does not show nature as being liberating. The trochaic rhythm brings a powerful drumbeat, and although a totally different poem has a feeling of imprisonment like London. Repetition of ‘symmetry’ has a similar effect and shows that the tyger’s beauty is so wonderful it is terrifying. Much of the making of the tyger is likened to heavy industrial work, ‘fire’, ‘hammer’, ‘chain’ and ‘furnace’ which associates the tyger with the Industrial Revolution and the enslavement of the population. This directly contrasts the idea that nature symbolises liberation.
To a great extent I believe Blake’s poetry is of the opinion that nature liberates and man imprisons. There is no evidence in his poetry that he believes mankind liberates, it is only nature and supreme beings such as the Angel in the Chimney Sweeper of Innocence that have such power. However, nature does not always liberate, highlighting that it is not just man that has the power to imprison.
