An Analysis of Blakes The School Boy Essay -- Blake The School Boy

An Analysis of Blakes The School Boy The School Boy is a classifiable example of Blakes Songs of whiteness and Songs of arrest in its themes and imagery. Like galore(postnominal) of the former(a) poetrys in this work it deals with childhood and the subjugation of its spirit and uses imagery from the cancel world. While first published in 1789 as one of the Songs of honour there are strong reasons why Blake moved it to the Experience1 atom of the 1794 edition. If we comparability it to new(prenominal) poems in the collection it sits better with others in Experience than those in naturalness. On first reading The School Boy is the voice of a boyish boy complaining of being shut inside at his school assignment instead of playing outside in the sun. When we look at the poem further we can see that the poet is returning to the theme of childhood quash and its natural joy destroyed that can be seen in other poems in the collection such as The Chimney Sweeper in Experience wit h its comparison of the child who was happy on the heath to now Crying weep weep in notes of agony . The poem begins in Stanza I with the poet giving us a rural image of the innocence of nature reminiscent of that in The Introduction from sinlessness, some critics wee-wee pointed out the similarity of The distant huntsman winds his horn in this poem with Piping down the valleys wild in The Introduction of Innocence2 . The poem gives us an image of rising with the company of many natural joys, not just the huntsman but birds sing on every tree and the sky-lark sings with me. It is in Stanza II that we see the oppression of the natural by authority typical of Experience and continued through the rest of the poem. This stanza compares the sylvan imagery... ...glewood Cliffs Prentice-Hall, 1966. Hyland, Dominic, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Harlow Longman York Press, 1982. Notes To avoid confusion between the 1789 edition Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Innocen ce section of the 1794 combined edition I have shortened the section names to Innocence and Experience throughout and refer to the 1789 edition as Songs of Innocence and the 1794 edition Songs Of Innocence and Of Experience as the 1794 edition where it is incumbent to draw a distinction. One example is found in D. Hyland, William Blake Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience (Harlow Longman York Press, 1982), p. 48 William Blake, Songs Of Innocence and Of Experience, (London Rupert Hart Davis, 1967) plate 53 . D. Hyland, William Blake Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience (Harlow Longman York Press, 1982), p. 48