BLAKE & BONO

This is from my post to a Quaker blog in 2024.

If we are open to listening and to seeking new experience we are often led in unexpected and surprising directions. When seeking performances by The King's Singers I came across a meditative video which included in the title Bono/U2 arr. Bob Chilcott - MLK.

This is the legend for the recording: "To mark Martin Luther King Day 2018, The King's Singers took a few minutes to record their cover of this song, MLK, by Bono from the band U2. The arrangement is by Bob Chilcott, former tenor in The King's Singers, and it was recorded during in L'Oratoire du Louvre, Paris."

So my next step was to check out Bono and the connection to Martin Luther King.

These are the simple words of the song:

 

"Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized

If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on him
Mmm
So let it be
Mmm
So let it be

Sleep
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain
Rain on him"

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Adam Clayton / Dave Evans / Larry Mullen / Paul Hewson [Bono]

 

I found this tribute to King from Bono:

“Dr. King kept us tolerant in a time of terror,” Bono says during his 10-minute tribute. “Kept us faithful to peace and community. Made us believe in joy and justice. Showed us the way to a shared humanity. Dr. King’s voice is louder today than it has ever been. He is one of the true fathers of our American dream.”

Now I wanted to know more about Bono and U2. Searching on Wikipedia through his biography and career as a pop singer, I learned that a tour which the group made in 2014-15 was named Songs of Innocence. The next tour 2017 they named Songs of Experience. A combined Innocence and Experience tour took place in 2018. I needed to know more about the connection of Bono with William Blake who wrote his illuminated poetry titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience in the late 18th century.

Here is what Bono had to say in an Interview with Rolling Stones:

What are the common themes that tie the songs on Songs of Experience together?
"I try not to talk about William Blake too much because it sounds pretentious quoting such a literary giant but it was his great idea I pinched to compare the person we become through experience to the person who set out on the journey. If you’re talking about innocence, you’ve probably already lost it but I do believe at the far end of experience, it’s possible to recover it with wisdom. I’m not saying I have much of that but what little I have, I wanted to cram into these songs. I know U2 go into every album like it’s their last one but even more this time I wanted the people around me that I loved to know exactly how I felt. So a lot of the songs are kind of letters, letters to Ali [wife], letters to my sons and daughters, actually our sons and daughters.
...
And one that I didn’t realize until too late that I was writing to myself, “It’s the Little Things Give You Away.” In all of these advice type songs, you are of course preaching what you need to hear. In that sense, they’re all written to the singer. One other piece on Blake, I don’t know if I’m explaining too much here but the best songs for me are often arguments with yourself or arguments with some other version of yourself. Even singing our song “One,” which was half fiction, I’ve had this ongoing fight. In “Little Things,” innocence challenges experience: “I saw you on the stairs, you didn’t notice I was there, that’s cause you were busy talking at me, not to me. You were high above the storm, a hurricane being born but this freedom just might cost you your liberty.”

At the end of the song, experience breaks down and admits his deepest fears, having been called out on it by his younger, braver, bolder self. That same conversation also opens the album with a song called ”Love Is All We Have Left.” My favorite opening line to a U2 album: “There’s nothing to stop this being the best day ever.” In the second verse, innocence admonishes experience: “Now you’re at the other end of the telescope, seven billion stars in her eyes, so many stars so many ways of seeing, hey, this is no time not to be alive.” It’s a chilling moment – in the chorus I was pretending to be Frank Sinatra singing on the moon, a sci-fi torch song “love, love is all we have left, a baby cries on the doorstep, love is all we have left.”

William Blake

Songs of Innocence 

Little Black Boy

Bono quote from the LA Times:

“Songwriting comes from a different place,” he continues. “Music is the language of the spirit. I think ideas and words are our excuse as songwriters to allow our heart or our spirit to run free. That’s when magic happens.”

Dreams, too, come from a different place. We don't own them; they are shared. But the dream of freedom, equality and justice is implemented in individual ways by individuals. Each of us becomes a part of the dream in the way that it can be expressed through us.

Songs of Innocence, SONGS 15, (E 11)
"Laughing Song,
When the green woods laugh, with the voice of joy
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by,
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.

When the meadows laugh with lively green
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily,
With their sweet round mouths sing Ha, Ha, He.

When the painted birds laugh in the shade
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread
Come live & be merry and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of Ha, Ha, He."

ILLUMINATED BOOKS

William Blake: Poet . Printer . Prophet is the Commorative Handbook of an Exhibition of the Illuminated Books of William Blake arranged by the William Blake Trust. The Foreword is provided by Lessing J. Rosenwald whose Blake Collection was given to the Library of Congress. Geoffery Keynes, a leading Blake scholar, contributed commentary and the Chronology of the publication of the Illuminated Books and of important events in Blake's life 

An Exhibition of the Illuminated Books of William Blake, Commentary by Geoffery Keynes:

Page 16

"In the course of Making the Illuminated Books presently to be described Blake must have etched at least 363 copper-plates of various sizes. Most of these he kept by him through his several changes of residence, and many were still in the possession of Mrs. Blake after his death in 1827. Posthumous copies of the books are known, printed, probably, by Blake's friend, Frederick Tatham, on paper with a watermark 1831 or 1832. The majority then disappeared, probably being sold as scrap metal, though somehow the sixteen plates of the Songs, as  already mentioned, were available to Gilchrist when publishing his Life of Blake in 1863. Later these, too, vanished, so we were left only with the electrotype blocks kept by the printer of the Life. 

... [T]here were intervals of time between the issue of examples of a book during which Blake's taste and judgement altered. The Songs of Innocence and of Experience best illustrate this development since there was a greated demand for this book than for any other from 1794 until the end of his life in 1827. His coloring, at first extreme simplicity, became more careful and complicated, and after 1815 the general scheme was rich and elaborate." 

The image is from William Blake Poet . Printer . Prophet. Copy Z is the copy which was used to create the facsimile of Songs of Innocence and of Experience for the Blake Trust. Copy Z was printed in 1826 by Catherine Blake. The coloring was completed by William before he died in 1827.   

  

Blake Archive

Original in Library of Congress

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Plate 8, Copy Z

 The Lamb

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Songs 8, (E 8)  
"The Lamb

  Little Lamb who made thee
  Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,       
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales  rejoice!
  Little Lamb who made thee
  Dost thou know who made thee  

  Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
  Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,        
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
  Little Lamb God bless thee.
  Little Lamb God bless thee."      

THE CHILD

                         Fitzwilliam Museum

                         Songs of Innocence

Plate 9, Copy AA

Two aspects of the child which Blake portrays are the potential of the child and the vulnerability of the child. He shows us the child who merrily requests the songs but whose joy brought tears to his eyes. The contradictory nature of childhood is present from the first of the songs. The same child who delights in the simplest of things - the smile, the touch, the sight, the sound, or the taste, can be devastated by a restraining hand, a critical word, or the admonition 'no'.  

As we read through the song of Innocence we hear of stresses which enter the life of the child. The Little Black Boy feels the alienation of not being accepted by the English child. The Little Boy lost can't keep up with his father and must 'weep' to get his attention. The Little Boy Found requires the intervention of God's guidance to reestablish his connection with his family. In the Divine Image the child learns that Mercy Pity Peace and Love are within him because they are synonymous with the Divine Image - the God within. In Nurse's Song we see children who have beyond the need for external supervision because they are aware of presence of the light and desire to enjoy it least it fade. In Anothers Sorrow the child has reached the maturity of knowing that there is suffering to be borne, but who realizes that there is One who shares the pains of the world. 

Songs of Innocence, Plate 4, (E 7)

"Introduction
Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me.

Pipe a song about a Lamb;    
So I piped with merry chear,
Piper pipe that song again--
So I piped, he wept to hear.

Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear,        
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear

Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read--
So he vanish'd from my sight.
And I pluck'd a hollow reed.

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear" 

Songs of Innocence, Plate 9, (E 9)   
"The Little Black Boy.

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.

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.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.      
And flowers and trees and beasts and men recieve
Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.

And 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.
SONGS 10  
For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus  did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy;
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

Ill shade him from the heat till lie can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me."

Songs of Innocence, Plate 13, (E 11) 
"The Little Boy lost     

Father, father, where are you going
O do not walk so fast.
Speak father, speak to your little boy
Or else I shall be lost,

The night was dark no father was there   
The child was wet with dew,
The mire was deep, & the child did weep
And away the vapour flew."

Songs of Innocence, Plate 14, (E 11)
"The Little Boy Found 

The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wand'ring light,
Began to cry, but God ever nigh,
Appeard like his father in white.

He kissed the child & by the hand led  
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow pale, thro' the lonely dale
Her little boy weeping sought." 

Songs of Innocence, Plate 18, (E 12)
"The Divine Image.             

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy Pity Peace and Love,  
Is God our father dear:
And Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is Man his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine   
Love Mercy Pity Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk or jew.
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell,
 
There God is dwelling too"  

Songs of innocence, Plate 24, (E 15) 

"Nurse's Song                      
When the voices of children are heard on the green   
And laughing is heard on the hill,       
My heart is at rest within my breast
And every thing else is still

Then come home my children, the sun is gone down    
And the dews of night arise
Come come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies

No no let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep      
Besides in the sky, the little birds fly     
And the hills are all coverd with sheep

Well well go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd  
And all the hills ecchoed"
 
Songs of Innocence, Plate 27, (E 17)   
"On Anothers Sorrow   

Can I see anothers woe,
And not be in sorrow too.
Can I see anothers grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrows share,
Can a father see his child,
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd.

Can a mother sit and hear,
An infant groan an infant fear--
No no never can it be.
Never never can it be.

And can he who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small birds grief & care
Hear the woes that infants bear--

And not sit beside the nest
Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near
Weeping tear on infants tear. 

And not sit both night & day,
Wiping all our tears away.
O! no never can it be.
Never never can it be.

He doth give his joy to all. 
He becomes an infant small.
He becomes a man of woe
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not, thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy maker is not by.
Think not, thou canst weep a tear,
And thy maker is not near.

O! he gives to us his joy,
That our grief he may destroy
Till our grief is fled & gone
He doth sit by us and moan"

Fitzwilliam Museum
            Songs of Innocence
Plate 24, Copy AA
  
Fitzwilliam Museum
          Songs of Innocence
Plate 14, Copy AA

LITTLE BLACK BOY

Wikipedia Commons
Songs of Innocence
Plate 9, Copy Y

The Little Black Boy is presented in the voice of the black child. Perhaps we whites are now being sensitized to racial tensions from the perspective of non-dominant race. Each has been trained to see from his own point of view. The 'black cloud' and the 'white cloud' prevent both children from seeing each other as beloved children of God who have gifts for the other.

A beauty of poetry is that it is capable of speaking to different individuals in different ways, and to the same individual in different ways at different times. Today I am listening to The Little Black Boy by focusing on the 'black cloud' and the 'white cloud' from which the black child and white child must be set free.

Years ago the theologian Nels Ferre wrote a book titled The Sun and the Umbrella. Ferre based his book on Plato's myth of the cave in which mankind's perception of reality came from seeing only shadows, not from the objects which cast the shadows. In Ferre's myth mankind was released from the cave so that he could see reality directly. But Ferre postulated the the direct vision was too bright for those who were exposed to it. Rather than return to the cave, some constructed Umbrellas to protect themselves from the intensity of naked truth.   

I am becoming aware that 'we backs' and 'we whites' voluntarily live within clouds which shield us from the truth of a fuller knowledge of our brotherhood. We construct fantasies based on false conceptions, on self interest, on fears, and on historical divisions. Blake's poem indicates that breaking down the barriers to love is not painless. But if we are to 'bear the beams of love,' each must free himself from the cloud which shields him as does Ferre's umbrella. It is from the intensity of experiencing The Divine Vision that we try to escape.  

Songs of Innocence, Plate 9, (E 9)   
"The Little Black Boy.

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.

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.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.      
And flowers and trees and beasts and men recieve
Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.

And 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.

SONGS 10  
For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus  did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy;
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me."

Milton, Plate 32 [35], (E 131)
"Because we were combind in Freedom & holy Brotherhood
While those combind by Satans Tyranny first in the blood of War 
And Sacrifice &, next, in Chains of imprisonment: are Shapeless Rocks
Retaining only Satans Mathematic Holiness, Length: Bredth & Highth
Calling the Human Imagination: which is the Divine Vision & Fruition
In which Man liveth eternally: madness & blasphemy, against      
Its own Qualities, which are Servants of Humanity, not Gods or Lords." 

Jerusalem, Plate 27, (E 173) 
 "The Divine Vision still was seen
Still was the Human Form, Divine
  Weeping in weak & mortal clay
O Jesus still the Form was thine.      

  And thine the Human Face & thine
The Human Hands & Feet & Breath
  Entering thro' the Gates of Birth
And passing thro' the Gates of Death"

---

From an address by Thorwald W. Bender

FERRE'S CHRISTOLOGY: "Christ in You the Hope of Glory"

---

"The following quotations from The Sun and the Umbrella voices  his concern:

'Unfortunately , the face of God has been hid under 
Christian Umbrellas. The power of the Sun seldom falls 
directly on the worshippers. The healing rays of the Sun 
are deflected, thrown back and absorbed by the Umbrellas 
under which the Gospel of God as Love is proclaimed. 
Even Christian theology can be an effective Umbrella 
against the full light of the Sun. Much of the formulation of 
the Christian faith is made out of a closely woven fabric 
under which alone the early disciples dared to leave the 
House of Legality. Can we now sift, in some way, what is 
Light from what is Umbrella? The task has to be done.'"   

 

INNOCENCE/EXPERIENCE

Wikipedia Commons

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Copy L, Plate 40

Quoting from William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Edited by Andrew Lincoln:

Introduction, Page 10

"The Songs of Innocence and of Experience rarely offer simple choices - as between moral absolutes - but tend to emphasize the relativity of particular images and points of view. 'Mercy, Pity, Love and Peace' can reveal the innate divinity of all human life, or mask the selfishness of the natural heart. To accept the one view and refuse the alternative would be to turn away from an unpleasant truth or to accept a reductive view of human feeling. Some poems contain contradictory views within them, and as we shall see, Blake's technique generates ambiguities that repeatedly complicate interpretation. Few books offer such a challenge with such a disarming appearance of simplicity."

When I learned that Bono and U2 had named their tour in 2014-15 Songs of Innocence and had followed up with Songs of Experience in 2017, I wanted to learn the connection between Bono and Blake. They topped it off with a combined tour Innocence and Experience in 2018.

Here is what Bono had to say in an Interview with Rolling Stones:

What are the common themes that tie the songs on Songs of Experience together?
"I try not to talk about William Blake too much because it sounds pretentious quoting such a literary giant but it was his great idea I pinched to compare the person we become through experience to the person who set out on the journey. If you’re talking about innocence, you’ve probably already lost it but I do believe at the far end of experience, it’s possible to recover it with wisdom. I’m not saying I have much of that but what little I have, I wanted to cram into these songs. I know U2 go into every album like it’s their last one but even more this time I wanted the people around me that I loved to know exactly how I felt. So a lot of the songs are kind of letters, letters to Ali [wife], letters to my sons and daughters, actually our sons and daughters."
...
And one that I didn’t realize until too late that I was writing to myself, “It’s the Little Things Give You Away.” In all of these advice type songs, you are of course preaching what you need to hear. In that sense, they’re all written to the singer. One other piece on Blake, I don’t know if I’m explaining too much here but the best songs for me are often arguments with yourself or arguments with some other version of yourself. Even singing our song “One,” which was half fiction, I’ve had this ongoing fight. In “Little Things,” innocence challenges experience: “I saw you on the stairs, you didn’t notice I was there, that’s cause you were busy talking at me, not to me. You were high above the storm, a hurricane being born but this freedom just might cost you your liberty.”

At the end of the song, experience breaks down and admits his deepest fears, having been called out on it by his younger, braver, bolder self. That same conversation also opens the album with a song called ”Love Is All We Have Left.” My favorite opening line to a U2 album: “There’s nothing to stop this being the best day ever.” In the second verse, innocence admonishes experience: “Now you’re at the other end of the telescope, seven billion stars in her eyes, so many stars so many ways of seeing, hey, this is no time not to be alive.” It’s a chilling moment – in the chorus I was pretending to be Frank Sinatra singing on the moon, a sci-fi torch song “love, love is all we have left, a baby cries on the doorstep, love is all we have left.”

Here is a quote from Hopeful Symmetry: A Blakeian Look at U2’s Songs Of Experience:

"But as with U2’s Songs of Innocence, and much of U2’s music, out of the darkness comes light.  Joyful defiance.

You see now why we cry: the raw honesty of the letters to loved ones, the thought of losing Bono, the thought of losing things we hold dear – like freedom, democracy… the empathy for what Bono might have gone through during and after his scare, the empathy with refugees. This album is an emotional juggernaut.  It hits you with all the feels…"

---

Bono sings Let your love be known

It seems clear to me that Blake's goal was that readers of Songs of Innocence and of Experience not approach the poems as an intellectual exercise. Although the poems can yield much insight to the intellect, they speak just a powerfully to the emotions and to the Soul or Imagination (to use Blake's term.) Symbolic language necessarily connects differently to each mind that it enters according to the gifts of the beholder. It is not surprising that a musician responds to the Songs as an intuitive, emotional experience. 

Bono and U2 seem to have assimilated Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience and produced in their own media and style, groups of songs based on themes and techniques used by Blake. But the musicians work is directed toward involving the audience in emotional responses. Bono uses what he is familiar with, his own life experience, to drive home his feelings of sorrow and joy, anger and delight, fear and trust. Blake wanted to show the two contrary states of the human soul; Bono aims to do the same. As rock music, innocence and experience become insistent and visceral.    

Jerusalem, Plate 91, (E 251)
"Go, tell them that the Worship of God, is honouring his gifts
In other men: & loving the greatest men best, each according
To his Genius: which is the Holy Ghost in Man; there is no other
God, than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity; 
He who envies or calumniates: which is murder & cruelty,
Murders the Holy-one: Go tell them this & overthrow their cup,
Their bread, their altar-table, their incense & their oath:
Their marriage & their baptism, their burial & consecration:
I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts but have only    
Made enemies: I never made friends but by spiritual gifts;
By severe contentions of friendship & the burning fire of thought."

Jerusalem, Plate 53, (E 203)
"loud the Furnaces & loud the Anvils          
Of Death thunder incessant around the flaming Couches of
The Twentyfour Friends of Albion and round the awful Four
For the protection of the Twelve Emanations of Albions Sons
The Mystic Union of the Emanation in the Lord; Because   
Man divided from his Emanation is a dark Spectre                 
His Emanation is an ever-weeping melancholy Shadow
But she is made receptive of Generation thro' mercy
In the Potters  Furnace, among the Funeral Urns of Beulah
From Surrey hills, thro' Italy and Greece, to Hinnoms vale.
PLATE 54
In Great Eternity, every particular Form gives forth or Emanates
Its own peculiar Light, & the Form is the Divine Vision
And the Light is his Garment This is Jerusalem in every Man
A Tent & Tabernacle of Mutual Forgiveness Male & Female Clothings.
And Jerusalem is called Liberty among the Children of Albion" 

Four Zoas, Night I, Page 13, (E 308)
"But purple night and crimson morning & golden day descending  
Thro' the clear changing atmosphere display'd green fields among
The varying clouds, like paradises stretch'd in the expanse
With towns & villages and temples, tents sheep-folds and pastures
Where dwell the children of the elemental worlds in harmony,     
Not long in harmony they dwell, their life is drawn away    
And wintry woes succeed; successive driven into the Void
Where Enion craves: successive drawn into the golden feast

And Los & Enitharmon sat in discontent & scorn             
The Nuptial Song arose from all the thousand thousand spirits 
Over the joyful Earth & Sea, and ascended into the Heavens
For Elemental Gods their thunderous Organs blew; creating
Delicious Viands. Demons of Waves their watry Eccho's woke!
Bright Souls of vegetative life, budding and blossoming      
Page 14
Stretch their immortal hands to smite the gold & silver Wires
And with immortal Voice soft warbling fill all Earth & Heaven.
With doubling Voices & loud Horns wound round sounding
Cavernous dwellers fill'd the enormous Revelry, Responsing!
And Spirits of Flaming fire on high, govern'd the mighty Song.   

And This the Song! sung at The Feast of Los & Enitharmon"

Four Zoas, Night I, Page 12, (E 307)
"The Earth spread forth her table wide. the Night a silver cup
Fill'd with the wine of anguish waited at the golden feast
But the bright Sun was not as yet; he filling all the expanse
Slept as a bird in the blue shell that soon shall burst away

Los saw the wound of his blow he saw he pitied he wept   
Los now repented that he had smitten Enitharmon he felt love
Arise in all his Veins he threw his arms around her loins
To heal the wound of his smiting

They eat the fleshly bread, they drank the nervous wine" 

Although William Blake never had the opportunity to attend a rock concert, he may have been able to appreciate the vitality of a multimedia production of poetry which had the capacity to console as well as disturb.

 

ANOTHERS SORROW

Wikipedia Commons

Songs of Innocence

Plate 27

We have been following the motifs in the three poems from Innocence which first appeared in Island in the Moon. Michael Phillips, in William Blake: The Creation of the Songs, on Pages 13-14 comments thus:

"Each of these has been presented from a distinct point of view. And, within the songs themselves, each presents a different perspective upon the child and childhood. In Holy Thursday, it is that of the distant but moved observer, sung by Obtuse Angle, a name which itself is suggestive of a way of seeing and not seeing. In Nurse's Song we are taken aback, in reverie: 'it puts me in mind of my grandmothers song' by the singer and by the song. And in The Little Boy Lost sung by Blake's own persona, 'Quid the Cynic', in the first stanza the child speaks to us directly and poignantly, abandoned by his parent. We are brought full circle, back to the match seller's cries.

    [" I cry my matches as far as Guild hall
     God bless the duke & his aldermen all
...
     I ask the Gods no more
          no more no more"]

In Songs of Innocence, Blake will fully explore and modulate the contrary perspectives of innocence and experience first seen here.
...
In the pages that follow we are about to learn from the children, to reawaken a part of ourselves that in relation to the world of experience, to our world, has been diminished or altogether lost."

---

So Blake is showing us innocent children who play with lambs and frolic on the Ecchoing Green, whose mothers and angels and wild animals watch over them. But we see also innocent children who are forced to sell matches, climb chimneys, go hungry and feel lost and abandoned.

It is not enough to feel empathy for those who suffer, Blake asks us to enter into the joy which is felt by infants, children, parents, birds, flowers, insects and animals. Blake has woven both aspects of emotions into his Songs of Innocence. There is delight in the beauties of a world where everything works together; and there is anguish when harm is visited upon the helpless. Blake asks us to look at the emotions which are felt by a child when he feel lost and when he feels protected and valued. In Providing images in words and pictures of alternating emotions, Blake makes us aware of the internal dynamics of our own emotions as well as the joy and woe that others experience. Our ability to empathize with others is enhanced by entering into the emotional states which he presents. Unless a person has a realistic understanding of his own emotions, his empathy for others will be inauthentic.    

Blake selected On Anothers Sorrow to be the final poem in Songs of Innocence in all of the copies which he collated after 1818. Although the poem emphasizes the pain which is felt when one sees another suffering, we are left with and image of joy which comes from the savior being ever present bringing his peace.

Songs of Innocence, Song 27, (E 17)    
"On Anothers Sorrow        

Can I see anothers woe,
And not be in sorrow too.
Can I see anothers grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrows share,
Can a father see his child,
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd.

Can a mother sit and hear,
An infant groan an infant fear--
No no never can it be.
Never never can it be.

And can he who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small birds grief & care
Hear the woes that infants bear--

And not sit beside the nest
Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near
Weeping tear on infants tear. 

And not sit both night & day,
Wiping all our tears away.
O! no never can it be.
Never never can it be.

He doth give his joy to all. 
He becomes an infant small.
He becomes a man of woe
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not, thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy maker is not by.
Think not, thou canst weep a tear,
And thy maker is not near.

O! he gives to us his joy,
That our grief he may destroy
Till our grief is fled & gone
He doth sit by us and moan"
   

---

Philippians 4
[4] Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.
[5] Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
[6] Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
[7] And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

NURSE'S SONG

Wikipedia Commons

Songs of Innocence

Plate 24

The second of the three Songs of Innocence poems which Blake wrote for Island in the Moon is Nurse's Song. The first two lines are spoken by an observer. The Nurse reveals her own emotional state in the next six lines. She is content to do her duty rather than participating in the singing and laughter of the children. Although the Nurse is satisfied within herself, in the next verse she expresses apprehension for the children. However the children want to extend their joyful, carefree play. The Nurse relents, realizing that the light in which the children bask will soon fade and that they may sleep when the light is gone.

Innocence, Blake realizes, is a temporary state. Children grow up and are exposed to the demands of living. The nurse plays the role of the protective element in the Nurse's Song but she has not been given the knowledge or understanding to guide the children along the perilous path. The careless activity of the children playing on the green is contrasted with the Nurse's concern about fading night. We see the cyclical rhythm of night and day, play and sleep, childhood and maturity. 

It is not clear from the poem if the children are well provided for by families or if they are under the care of institutions for the poor as are the children in Holy Thursday. We wonder if the laughter and play are part of an innocent childhood or if they are a respite for children who have already been exposed to hunger, cruelty and harsh conditions such as Dickens and Bronte described and Blake wrote about in The Chimney Sweeper.

On Page 38 of Blake's Apocalypse Harold Bloom states:

"For Blake 'Innocence' is from the start an equivocal term.
...
So, by 1789, when he engraved the Songs of Innocence, Blake seems to have anticipated joining them together with songs that would show 'The Contrary State of the Human Soul,' as he did five years later. Innocence is a state that warms our hearts against and reproaches the errors of a supposed mature existence."

Songs of innocence, SONGS 24, (E 15)
"Nurse's Song          

When the voices of children are heard on the green       
And laughing is heard on the hill,                             
My heart is at rest within my breast
And every thing else is still

Then come home my children, the sun is gone down    
And the dews of night arise
Come come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies

No no let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep                                       
Besides in the sky, the little birds fly                          
And the hills are all coverd with sheep

Well well go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd  
And all the hills ecchoed"

HOLY THURSDAY

Yale Center for British Art

Songs of Innocence, Plate 19, (E 13) 
"HOLY THURSDAY          

Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow
   
O what a multitude they seemd these flowers of London town 
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands
   
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song 
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among
Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor 
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door"

Holy Thursday is the first of the three poems which Blake wrote in Island in the Moon and later included in Songs of Innocence. It is a link between Blake's musings on various subjects which he expressed in Island in the Moon and his concerted effort to present the complex view of the world which occupied his mind and took form in his illuminated books. 

On page 237 of Fearful Symmetry, Northrop Frye tells us that:
"The Songs of Experience are satires, but one of the things that they satirize is the state of innocence. They show us the butcher's knife which is waiting for the unconscious lamb. Conversely, the Songs of Innocence satirize the state of experience, as the contrast they present to it make its hypocrisies more obviously shameful. Hence the two contrary states of the soul, and in their opposition there is a double-edged irony, cutting into the tragedy and the reality of fallen existence."

We could hardly think that Holy Thursday represented naked innocence. After all these are orphan children marching into the cathedral under the supervision of beadles. The children themselves are innocent: their faces are innocent as are their hands. But we are left with questions about "Grey headed beadles" who "walkd before with wands as white as snow" and the "aged men wise guardians of the poor." Is it enough that the children "raise to heaven the voice of song?" Testimony to the neglect and abuse of London's children in Blake's day is abundant.

The type of satire of which Frye writes is explained in the article on Menippean Satire in Wikipedia:
"Critic Northrop Frye said that Menippean satire moves rapidly between styles and points of view. Such satires deal less with human characters than with the single-minded mental attitudes, that they represent: the pedant, the braggart, the bigot, the miser, the quack, the seducer, etc. Frye observed that, The novelist sees evil and folly as social diseases, but the Menippean satirist sees them as diseases of the intellect."

CREATING THE SONGS

Wikipedia Commons

Songs of Innocence

Plate 16

---

Island in the Moon was written in 1784 when his brother Robert was alive and living with William and Catherine in the building which also served as the print shop of Blake and James Parker. The setting for these anecdotes are gatherings at the homes of participants. At first glance Blake's cynical and ironic account of the social interaction of caricatures of his friends and associates seems to bear little relationship to his later work. One exception to the light-hearted humorous nature of this sixteen page manuscript is the inclusion of drafts of three poems which Blake later incorporated in Songs of Innocence. In his book William Blake: The Creation of the Songs, Michael Phillips states  that, "Here, perhaps, is the inception of the Songs and clearly a harbinger of what is to follow."

Northrop Frey indicates that the context in which these "'delicate and fragile"' poems appear suggests that "parallel songs of experience was already in Blake's mind, and was in origin an idea connected with satire."

---

Island in the Moon, (E 462)
 
           " Chap 11

  Another merry meeting at the house of Steelyard the Lawgiver
  After Supper Steelyard & Obtuse Angle. had pumpd Inflammable
Gass quite dry. they playd at forfeits & tryd every method to get
good song then he sung humour. said Miss Gittipin pray
Mr Obtuse Angle sing us a song   then he sung

     Upon a holy thursday their innocent faces clean
     The children walking two & two in grey & blue & green
     Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow
     Till into the high dome of Pauls they like thames waters flow

     O what a multitude they seemd, these flowers of London town 
     Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
     The hum of multitudes were there but multitudes of lambs
     Thousands of little girls & boys raising their innocent hands

     Then like a mighty wind they raise to heavn the voice of song  
     Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heavn among     
     Beneath them sit the revrend men the guardians of the poor
     Then cherish pity lest you drive an angel from your door

  After this they all sat silent for a quarter of an hour [&
Mrs Sigtagatist] <& Mrs Nannicantipot> said it puts me
in Mind of my [grand] mothers song

     When the tongues of children are heard on the green 
     And laughing is heard on the hill                 
     My heart is at rest within my breast
     And every thing else is still

     Then come home my children the sun is gone down     
     And the dews of night arise
     Come Come leave off play & let us away
     Till the morning appears in the skies

     No No let us play for it is yet day
     And we cannot go to sleep      
     Besides in the Sky the little birds fly      
     And the meadows are coverd with Sheep    

     Well Well go & play till the light fades away
     And then go home to bed
     The little ones leaped & shouted & laughd                    
     And all the hills ecchoed

Then [Miss Gittipin] [Tilly Lally sung]
[Quid] sung <Quid>

     O father father where are you going
     O do not walk so fast
     O speak father speak to your little boy
     Or else I shall be lost

     The night it was dark & no father was there                 
     And the child was wet with dew
     The mire was deep & the child did weep
     And away the vapour flew

  Here nobody could sing any longer, till Tilly Lally pluckd up a
spirit & he sung.

O I say you Joe
Throw us the ball
Ive a good mind to go
And leave you all"

Michael Phillips goes on to follow the development of Songs of Innocence and of Experience through the first drafts of the poems and the first sketches of the images to the final printing and coloring of the books. In William Blake: The Creation of the Songs From Manuscript to Illuminated Printing we follow in detail the meticulous process Blake followed in producing his works of Art:

"With the Songs, uniquely, we are in a position to be able to appreciate nearly every stage of their creation from writing to reproduction. In particular we have seen how difficult, often uncertain and demanding each stage in the creative process has been, from drafting the text, composing text and design on the copper plate, printing the plates in monochrome, hand colouring, and colour printing. That we are unable to trace this progress in the making of other illuminated books, should not lead us to believe that their creation came about more easily." (Page 113) 

.

SCHOOLMASTER

British Museum

Illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts

 

If you are the reflective sort of person, you can look at the life you are living from multiple perspectives. One lens through which I see my life is that of symbols. Since Blake was a master of creating symbols, manipulating symbols and revealing their meaning, I lean on him to teach me the whys, hows and whens of discovering and applying meanings enclosed in the input which bombards me.

Blake's Urizen was his symbol for the reasoning mind. The implications of Urizen as a symbol  spread in many directions. A fairly simple manifestation of Urizen was a the 'schoolmaster.' You probably remember that on the first day of his schooling, little William observed the schoolmaster 'birching' a child, got up and left the classroom, and never returned. Blake immediately reacted to the enforced discipline which the schoolmaster imposed. So the schoolmaster was useful as the aspect of Urizen which tried to control the behavior of others.

Four Zoas, Night IX,(E 389) 
"The Eternal Man sat on the Rocks & cried with awful voice

O Prince of Light [Urizen] where art thou   I behold thee not as once
In those Eternal fields in clouds of morning stepping forth 
With harps & songs where bright Ahania sang before thy face
And all thy sons & daughters gatherd round my ample table
See you not all this wracking furious confusion
Come forth from slumbers of thy cold abstraction come forth
Arise to Eternal births shake off thy cold repose 
Schoolmaster of souls great opposer of change arise
That the Eternal worlds may see thy face in peace & joy
That thou dread form of Certainty maist sit in town & village
While little children play around thy feet in gentle awe
Fearing thy frown loving thy smile O Urizen Prince of light" 

Marriage of Heaven an Hell, Plate 5, (E 48)

"and wilt thou take the ape 

For thy councellor? or the dog, for a schoolmaster to thy children?"  

 

Notebook, (E 518) 

"You say their Pictures well Painted be 

And yet they are Blockheads you all agree 

Thank God I never was sent to school 

To be Flogd into following the Style of a Fool "

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Song 53, (E 31) 
"The School Boy               

I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me.
O! what sweet company. 

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day,
In sighing and dismay.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour.
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learnings bower,
Worn thro' with the dreary shower. 
 
How can the bird that is born for joy,
Sit in a cage and sing.
How can a child when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring.

O! father & mother, if buds are nip'd,
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are strip'd
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and cares dismay, 

How shall the summer arise in joy.
Or the summer fruits appear,
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear. "

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Song 54, (E 31)
"The Voice of the Ancient Bard.     

Youth of delight come hither:
And see the opening morn,
Image of truth new born.
Doubt is fled & clouds of reason.
Dark disputes & artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze,
Tangled roots perplex her ways,

How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead,
And feel they know not what but care 
And wish to lead others, when they should be led."

Jerusalem, Plate 15, (E 159)
"I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of Europe
And there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages dire  
Washd by the Water-wheels of Newton. black the cloth
In heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel Works
Of many Wheels I View, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic
Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden: which
Wheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony & peace." 

Four Zoas, Night II, Page 28, (E 318)
"And many said We see no Visions in the darksom air
Measure the course of that sulphur orb that lights the darksom day  
Set stations on this breeding Earth & let us buy & sell
Others arose & schools Erected forming Instruments               
To measure out the course of heaven. Stern Urizen beheld
In woe his brethren & his Sons in darkning woe lamenting
Upon the winds in clouds involvd Uttering his voice in thunders
Commanding all the work with care & power & severity"

Miscellaneous Prose, Blake's Autograph, (E 698)
"I am apt to believe that what is done
without meaning is very different from that which a Man Does with
his Thought & Mind & ought not to be Calld by the Same Name."

---

Galatians 3

[24] Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
[25] But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.