36
votes
Accepted
Accented è in Blake's "The little ones leapèd, and shoutèd, and laugh'd / And all the hills echoèd."
The 'èd' verb ending in 19th-century and earlier poems indicates that you are supposed to pronounce the ending -ed as a separate syllable.
This is not the spelling Blake used when he originally wrote ...
- 13.7k
15
votes
Accepted
Why did the stars throw down their spears?
One approach to interpreting these lines is to read them semi-literally: the tiger is such a fearsome creature that even the stars themselves threw down their weapons rather than face it, and wept at ...
- 2,093
13
votes
To understand "silver dew" in William Blake's "To the Evening Star"
In “silver dew” the word “silver” is used in this sense:
silver, adj. 5.a. Having the whiteness or lustre of silver; silvery. Chiefly poetic.
Oxford English Dictionary.
So this describes the silvery ...
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11
votes
Accepted
What is the "starry pole" in Blake's "Songs of Experience"?
The phrase “starry pole” is a quotation from Milton’s Paradise Lost, whose book IV describes the life of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden:
Thus, at their shady lodge arrived, both stood,
Both ...
- 60.7k
11
votes
Accepted
What is the deeper meaning of "The Tyger"?
This answer is somewhat of a generalization of my self answer to Why did the stars throw down their spears? where I ended up analyzing most of the poem to explain the meaning of one particular, ...
- 2,093
11
votes
What are the "dark Satanic mills" in Blake's Jerusalem?
To approach this question, it's worth looking at the entirety of the passage that precedes it:
The stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to ...
- 30.8k
11
votes
What is the connection between "Holy Thursday" from Songs of Experience and the actual day?
The "Holy Thursday" to which Blake's poems refer is not Maundy Thursday, but Ascension Day, the celebration of Jesus's rise to heaven in his corporeal form. In the Anglican tradition, this ...
- 30.8k
10
votes
Accepted
Who first claimed that Blake’s “dark Satanic Mills” referred to the Church of England, and what was their argument?
David Daiches, in his book Critical Approaches to Literature (1956) (borrowed via the Internet Archive) says
Sometimes scholarship can produce startling interpretations of the meaning of a work, e.g. ...
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8
votes
Accepted
What is "the Poetic Genius"?
"Genius" in the classical sense means "spirit". It's distantly related to the word genesis, meaning "birth", as well as to words like genus "kind", genre, and gender. Another related term you might ...
- 5,138
8
votes
Accepted
Why is the robin "sobbing"?
Executive summary: the sparrow is the lover, and the robin is the child [thank you @PeterShor for cutting through the undergrowth]. Which might well invalidate my interpretation below :o)
Why a robin?
...
- 611
7
votes
Accepted
What is the meaning of Blake's poem "The Sick Rose"?
There is no one answer: a key part of this poem's appeal is its ambiguity.
On the surface, it seems a poetic description of a rose flower sickening and dying due to a parasitic infection. However, ...
- 23.2k
7
votes
Accepted
Does "the" only serve to preserve metre in "The Tyger"?
‘The Tyger’ contains a series of rhetorical questions, which we understand to be about the nature of the creator of the Tyger. The first questions are given in conventional English syntax:
What ...
- 60.7k
7
votes
What is the deeper meaning of "The Tyger"?
The perceived "banality" in relation to Innocence & Experience may be regarded as a device. In fact, the poems are all quite profound, but structured in a way as to be suitable for children as ...
- 4,283
7
votes
Accepted
What is "the Throne of Mammon grey" in William Blake's "I Rose Up at the Dawn of Day"?
The throne of Mammon is implicitly contrasted with the throne of God, which is mentioned in the next stanza. The throne of God is described in Revelation 4: 3-6 (King James Bible Online; emphasis mine)...
- 48.4k
6
votes
Are Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence actually songs? Or is the word song a metaphor?
There's a substantial body of evidence that the title "Songs of Innocence" points to the fact that the poems were intended to be sung.
In the article William Blake and the Music of the Songs, Kevin ...
- 141
5
votes
What is the deeper meaning of Blake's "The Lily"?
The key to understanding this poem is the contrast between the present and future tenses: the rose puts forth its thorn and the sheep its horn; the lily shall delight.
The rose is a recurrent image in ...
- 30.8k
5
votes
Why is "The Chimney Sweeper" in Songs of Innocence rather than Songs of Experience?
There are actually two "Chimney Sweeper" poems: one in Innocence and one in Experience.
You can see them both in the full text of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, by Ctrl+F'ing for "chimney". ...
- 74.4k
5
votes
Accepted
How many of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience come in pairs?
Let's start by listing the titles of all the Songs, and noting that you can read them in full here.
I'll now discuss various possible pairings among these poems, but bear in mind that there's no ...
- 74.4k
5
votes
Rhymes in William Blake's 'The Tyger'
No!
Here is an example that proves how Blake pronounces "eyes", from Songs of Innocence:
Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes.
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the ...
- 2,018
5
votes
Accepted
What does the title "Auguries of Innocence" (William Blake) mean?
Your question neatly encapsulates the two possible meanings of the phrase "Auguries of Innocence": first, prophecies made or omens seen by an innocent mind; second, prophecies made or omens ...
- 30.8k
4
votes
What are the "dark Satanic mills" in Blake's Jerusalem?
I agree with @verbose, there is no reason to assume Blake didn't mean mills or factories when he said Mills. If drawing a parallel to churches does exist it is fairly subtle.
Here's another way to ...
4
votes
What does "chartered" mean in Blake's poem "London"?
My sense is that Blake is talking about ownership, and the idea that the natural rights of people to the land and its resources is restricted by the artificial laws of man.
Charter (noun) formal ...
- 4,283
4
votes
What are the "mind-forged manacles"?
According to W. H. Stevenson's edition of Blake's complete poems (in the series Longman Annotated English Poets), the original phrase was "german-forged manacles", "suggesting the strength of skilled ...
- 48.4k
4
votes
Which version of William Blake's "Jerusalem" did John Reith recite to celebrate the end of the General Strike?
A recording of Reith's recitation was included in Episode 1 of the BBC radio series Battle of the Airwaves, and can be heard at 11 minutes 42s into the episode. Although the presenter rather ...
- 15.3k
4
votes
Does Blake appeal to his readers' faith in the last stanza of "Holy Thursday"?
the title “Holy Thursday” implies a religious context, making ["Blake appeals to his readers' faith"] also correct.
That sentence from the textbook betrays a remarkable lack of understanding of ...
- 74.4k
3
votes
What are the "mind-forged manacles"?
The assumption in other answers is that "ban" refers to censorship or prohibitions, but it probably refers to marriage bans.
This explains the last line's reference to the marriage hearse, ...
- 315
3
votes
Accepted
Is there any significance to Blake's choice of the name Lyca?
Blake's poems are cryptic and invite multiple interpretations. To my amazement, while researching this question I found that the 26 stanzas of these two poems inspired, among other things, an academic ...
- 23.2k
3
votes
Accepted
Could "mark" in "London" by William Blake be meant as a name?
This sense of mark (to take note of) is found here¹:
Notice or pay careful attention to.
‘he'll leave you, you mark my words!’
It doesn’t look like it’s intended to refer to a name, just a simple ...
- 611
3
votes
Accepted
What are the "mind-forged manacles"?
The original punctuation of the poem seems to be:
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of ...
- 13.7k
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