Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
D ROSE SONG CLEAN FREE
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said, ‘Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.’Īnd so he was quiet, & that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black Īnd by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins & set them all free Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river and shine in the Sun. When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry ’ ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!’ So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. It is impossible to say whether Blake is endorsing or questioning this viewpoint. Reflecting the racist European conventions of the period, the poem associates whiteness with enlightenment and purity, and blackness with physicality and ignorance. However, Blake also contrasts black and white repeatedly throughout the work.
D ROSE SONG CLEAN SKIN
Different skin colours are described as ‘clouds’ that interfere with the sun’s rays (God’s love), dulling our perception of the things all people have in common. The poem suggests that physical existence, specifically skin colour, is unimportant compared to the life of the spirit. The black boy will become like the white boy, who in turn will learn to love his black counterpart. In God’s kingdom, however, he and the white boy will play around God’s tent like innocent lambs.
D ROSE SONG CLEAN TRIAL
His mother taught him that this life is only a period of trial and preparation, in which he will learn to bear the ‘beams of love’ emanating from the sun where ‘God does live’. This young narrator insists that though his exterior is black, inside his soul is as white (or "pure") as the angelic-looking child. In this poem, Blake imagines the voice of a child. And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him and he will then love me. Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear, To lean in joy upon our fathers knee. When I from black and he from white cloud free, And round the tent of God like lambs we joy: Thus did my mother say and kissed me, And thus I say to little English boy. Saying: come out from the grove my love & care, And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice. And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.Īnd we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love, And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.įor when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice. Look on the rising sun: there God does live And gives his light, and gives his heat away. My mother taught me underneath a tree And sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissed me, And pointing to the east began to say. My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white White as an angel is the English child: But I am black as if bereav’d of light. In the contrary Songs of Experience, Blake provides an opposing opinion and a social critique: ‘And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty’. Although the triple repetition of ‘multitude(s)’ notes how many thousands of children live in poverty in London, the emphasis in this poem is on the ‘radiance’ which they bring to the church – they are ‘multitudes of lambs’. In the poet’s vision they leave their ‘wise Guardians’ beneath them and become angels – which is why the last line tells us to ‘cherish pity’ and remember our duty to the poor. As the boys and girls raise their hands and their voices to heaven, the narrator imagines them rising up to heaven too, just as Christ himself did on Ascension Day.
Although the children are made to enter the cathedral in regimented order, their angelic innocence overcomes all the constraints put upon them by authority – they even make the ‘red and blue and green’ of their school uniforms look like ‘flowers of London town’. The poem is based on the contrast between the ‘innocent faces’ of the children and the authority of the ‘grey headed beadles’ and the other ‘aged men’ who act as their guardians.
The poem ends with a moral: have pity on those less fortunate than yourself, as they include angelic boys and girls like those described here. The children sit and sing, and their voices rise up to heaven far above their aged guardians. The children enter the cathedral in strict order ‘walking two and two’ behind the beadles (wardens). The poem describes the annual Holy Thursday (Ascension Day) service in St Paul’s Cathedral for the poor children of the London charity schools.
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