Juvenilia ✔/ a Nonfiction Undergraduate University Collection

Virtue and Evil

ENGLISH 2902

English Literature 1660-1900

March 1st, 2018

Virtue and Evil

A running theme across all poems from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience is the idea of balanced opposites. However, Blake demonstrates his ideas of virtue and evil by twisting the cultural norm to show a dark, though realistic version of predator and prey as seen in 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger', 'The Chimney Sweeper', and 'Nurse's Song'. We see situations where the weak are exploited by the strong, and that can be shown through each of the poems. In 'The Lamb' and 'The Tiger', the tiger is the stronger of the two, and therefore the lamb would become prey. In 'The Chimney Sweeper', the society that would enslave a child to forced-labour is the wrong doer, and the child that can do nothing to stop his fate therefore becomes a victim and as a result loses his innocence. Finally, in 'Nurse's Song', it is shown through the nurse's reactions to the youthful, innocent children, that innocence is pointless because only those who have not truly lived have it. His ideas on virtue and evil are twisted because if the virtuous are exploited, who would ever want to be virtuous if you know the outcome is misery?

Though 'The Lamb' has an innocent, sing-song feel, with rhyming couplets and a simple form, the poem could be alluding to a much darker idea given that the poem seems to be about a child speaking with a lamb. Symbolically, lambs, an innocent animal, are sacrificed for the benefit of others, and it begs the question why the lamb was created through the speech and questions from the child. The poem has a running theme of origins, whereby the child in the poem asks the lamb, "Dost thou know who created thee?" It is a strange question to see in a children's poem because it's a very adult-like question. The child then continues to list off what the creator did, like "give thee life" and "bid thee feed". It begs the question for what purpose the lamb was created, and if the lamb was merely created for slaughter. In terms of conventional virtue versus evil, we do not see it in this poem. Instead, we see that the weak, the virtuous, are exploited or targeted by the strong, which is a very unconventional way of looking at virtue versus evil. In 'The Lamb', we have prey, and in 'The Tyger', we have predator. Who would want to be the lamb?

In contrast, 'The Tyger' has a more predatory approach. In the first and last stanzas, 'fearful symmetry' is mentioned, which aligns with 'The Lamb' with the idea of origins. "What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?" meaning what being could have forged such a sublime creature, and "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" which begs the question of whether or not the creator made both the lamb and the tiger along with their attributes. The poem also explores the idea that people have too much ambition, and when they embark on their quests, like Prometheus with fire, or Icarus with his wings, they will fail one way or another. It reinforces the idea of natural order and that there is a set balance to nature. Therefore, if there is a natural order to things, some beings will be higher on the food chain than others, and the result is not a great one for those on the bottom.

In 'The Chimney Sweeper', the scene seems to be depicting the Industrial Revolution with child labour and exploitation of the weak. Once again, we have a prey versus predator situation, but one where it comes at the expense of a child who has been robbed of a proper childhood. The juxtaposition of what a childhood should be, and reality is another contrasting idea between virtue and evil. Another juxtaposed theme is dark and light, which is shown with the white-blonde hair of Tom Dacre, covered in soot, and the black coffins and angel with the light key. A somewhat redeeming theme to all this dark imagery of child labour is the fact that in Tom's dream, the angel comes to him in his sleep and tells him if he's good, "he'd have God for his father, and never want joy." All in all, the innocent poem is showing that the virtuous could have something better in store if they endure, and though it shows good and evil, it shows it in a roundabout way.

As opposed to having silver linings, like in the innocent version, the experience version is the epitome of bleak. There is no angel who makes things better, nor is there frolicking in the meadow, flying in clouds, or dreams for that matter. In the experience version, it is really just about a crying boy who is abandoned by his parents who are more concerned with praying at church than doing anything about the little boys unhappiness and forced labour. The child in Experience is not deluded by the idea of the next life; instead, he knows he is miserable and the knowledge of it is the difference. The child knows he is being exploited by those around him, (namely his parents and society) and there's nothing he can do about it. The child mentions, "... And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King, who make up a heaven of our misery," which seems to be pointing towards the idea that 'God' should not be praised because 'God' is causing misery to the masses. The child is bitter that his parents are praying to a God that has let this injustice happen instead of providing him with the right of his childhood.

The innocent version of 'Nurse's Song' is the only poem that shows untarnished virtue. There's no definitive opposing force suggested; the kids are free and having a proper childhood, and they are being taken care of by their nurse. The setting of the poem is a green meadow, where something happy and positive takes place, and the nurse watches on like an angelic presence. The kids are concerned with not the impending darkness, but with the last drops of light, which is an important distinction because of its blatant optimism, and the nurse is more than willing to oblige them. Though the nurse is an authority figure for the children, she does not use her power over them and instead allows them to do as they wish because the indulgence in the children's desire to play was not a harmful one. There are no differences between the children and the nurse when it comes to happiness, and the nurse is as content to watch them play, as the children are to continue. The poem is highly positive in contrast to its counterpart.

The colour green in the Experience 'Nurse's Song' is synonymous with illness as opposed to joy and nature. The nurse sees the children playing and immediately feels sick at the thought of her own childhood. The specific reason her face turns green and pale is unclear, though there are reasonable guesses as to why she reacts the way she does. It could be because she sees the innocent children and knows that when they go through life, they will lose their virtuousness.

 "Your spring and your day are wasted with play, and your winter and night in disguise." 

The spring and day is symbolic of the children as they are, and the winter and night are symbolic of what they have in store, and that it is not what it should be. Instead, with the loss of purity and youthfulness, you get corruption and the nurse seems almost fearful with the knowledge of what is to come for them.

Balanced opposites occur throughout William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience consistently, and examples of such are predator versus prey, and dark versus light. Through these opposites, he explores the idea of strength, corruption and power, and how these forces are stronger than their opposite, and that it comes at the expense of the virtuous. The difference between the Innocence poems and the experience poems are that through the experience, a life has been lived, and a more realistic depiction is showed of the situation. Blake's ideas on virtue and evil can be explained by the outcome of each experience poem while the innocence poems merely introduce a simplistic version of the issues he would later expand on in Songs of Experience.

[WORKS CITED]

Blake, William. "Songs of Innocence and Experience." The Norton Anthology English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 2012. 118-28. Print.