(855) 4-ESSAYS

Type a new keyword(s) and press Enter to search

Blake and His Work

In the second poem Blake points a finger at the adults responsible. These adults include both the church and the state. Where the first poem seems to be guidance and expression of hope the second is clearly a condemnation of the tragedy of the polarized classes of the time.
             The two poems, "Holy Thursday" are also an excellent example of the common man, or in this case child, being used as a focus of literary work. I found the "Holy Thursday" poems to be much more moving and effective. This is likely because I was able to grasp the images Blake offers much more easily because of my own visit to St Paul's. The first "Holy Thursday" poem creates a beautiful vision of London's blessed children parading to church. Blake achieves these images and this emotion with the line: "The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green." A peaceful scene and an idealized image of what society wanted to see at the time. Blake not only shares with his reader the beautiful images of these perfect children, but also touches the senses with the description of the sounds of the scene: "Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song." The first poem is warm in emotion and beautiful in imagery while the second poem is cold, uncaring, gray and great illustrates through all the senses extreme poverty and sadness. I feel like the first poem is what society desperately wants to believe and the second is the reality that Blake is showing his audience through a magnifying glass. The contrast is just like that of looking at the same picture in two different ways. The first picture printed in color and the second in black and white. There always seems to be more truth and emotion in those pictures that are printed in black and white. The second "Holy Thursday" poem contrasts the first with the harsh reality of what is really happening in this scene. Blake is now raising the question of who is really the rich and who is the poor.


Essays Related to Blake and His Work

1. William Blake

William Blake who lived in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century was a poet, a philosopher, a radical, an artist, and a great thinker; who was able to bring about remarkable results with the simplest of means in all of his work. ... He was a critic of his own era but his poetry also strikes a chord in ours. ... Blake was witness to the transformation of a agricultural society to an industrial society, which is where the basis for some of his poems stand. As an example, we may look towards William Blake's London from his songs of experience,...

  • Word Count: 1175
  • Approx Pages: 5

2. Religion in the Poetry of William Blake

William Blake, one of the greatest Romantic poets, was born in London and lived there most of his life. ... It is taken from the work in The New Testament called Apocalypse or The Book of Revelation. ... Powell, "The author notes that the perfect, beautiful, symmetrical, work of art (the tyger) is such a destructive animal: here Blake is identifying the idea that there, in fact, is evil in such a beautiful world but he cannot understand why". ... In Blake's angriest manifestation of him, Urizen stands for the cruelty of an establishment that has failed to keep the peace and give...

  • Word Count: 2556
  • Approx Pages: 10
  • Grade Level: High School

3. Blake Poetry

"Blake's art is one of putting the complex into the simple" William Blake's art is one of putting the complex into the simple, as evident in the poems published in The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience. His approach to most topics: poverty, pressure, friendship, honesty, jealousy, survival, truth, human rights, industrialisation, child labour, and the complexity of his ideas contradict the simplicity in language and construction that Blake uses in his poems. ... London, a poem that was published in The Songs of Experience, is another work where Blake has put the compl...

  • Word Count: 1014
  • Approx Pages: 4

4. Analyzation of William Blake

How does William Blake increase the meaning and feeling of his poem, "The Tyger"? ... How does William Blake increase the meaning and feeling of his poem "The Tyger"? William Blake uses a variety of literary techniques and devices to express his thoughts vividly. ... Repetition is another literary technique that Blake uses to generate feeling and meaning in his poem, "The Tyger". ... Blake uses repetition diligently to impel the reader to further explore his wonderful work. ...

  • Word Count: 896
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

5. Exploring Blake

Many of William Blake's poems show strong undertones of anger towards his seemingly heartless society. ... If we see the "English Rose" as the theme, of the future and it's children, Blake uses the worm to symbolise his worst fear for his country's morrow. ... Blake's individuality worked very well with his ideas as he stood out from his contemporaries with challenging concepts submerged with his ballad-like writing. ... In the world of experience, which has been seen as Blake's view of his own world, the father immediately oppresses the child. ... Blake&#...

  • Word Count: 1020
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Has Bibliography

6. blake - imagery and sound

Write an essay on the importance of imagery and sound in the work of a poet or poets you have studied In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, by William Blake, imagery and sound are both very important. ... Blake uses different types of imagery, the first of which is nature imagery. ... This shows Blake's main theme shown in the full title of his poetry, Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Another main form of imagery used by Blake is colour imagery. ... The first is the different sound words used by Blake. ...

  • Word Count: 808
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

7. William Blake - Visions of Heaven and Hell

Blake claimed he saw God and his angels watching over him while he played and did his daily chores. ... In 1788, Blake experimented with relief etching, a method he used to produce most of his books, paintings and poems. ... At the age of four William Blake claimed to have seen God and his angels. ... Blake believed he was personally instructed and encouraged by Archangels to create his artwork , and claimed he enjoyed the work sent from the Archangels. ... He is a great artist and poet because his work inspired others to use their imagination and to encourage others to have their own opinio...

  • Word Count: 677
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

8. Blake The Romanticist

Despite the extremist nature of Blake that is ever present in his works, both literary and artistic, his core beliefs stem from the average romantic views infiltrated in society. ... Aside from simple comparisons though, Blake was his own person in a multitude of other ways. ... He was unique in his plethora of additional efforts placed into his work to make it that much more coherent and ultimately inimitable. ... When Blake composed Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, he reached a milestone in his career. It was through this work that his core feelings about Romantically controve...

  • Word Count: 509
  • Approx Pages: 2
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

9. Poems on Childhood by William Blake

William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789, 1794) extensively explores the concept of childhood. ... Wordsworth, in his autobiographical The Prelude (1805), promotes the Romantic ideology when he describes his own childhood: Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up Foster'd alike by beauty and by fear; Much favor'd in my birth-place, and no less In that beloved Vale to which, erelong, I was transplanted. ... (Wordsworth, 2003, I, 306-317) The elevation of the rural is demonstrated here as Wordsworth recalls his "beloved Vale" and his "joy"...

  • Word Count: 2182
  • Approx Pages: 9

Got a writing question? Ask our professional writer!
Submit My Question