This poem by William Blake explores themes of racial equality through the perspective of a black boy. The boy describes being born in the wilderness to his mother, who teaches him about God and helps him understand that though his skin is dark, his soul is white. The mother uses the rising sun and God's light as metaphors to represent divine love that sees past superficial qualities like skin color. The boy hopes that when he and a little English boy are free from earthly "clouds" like their bodies, they can rejoice together in God's presence and the English boy will then love him as brothers.
3. The poem… This poem was published in Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1789, during a time when slavery was still legal and the campaign for the abolition of it was just beginning.
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5. 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.
6. 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 receive Comfort in morning joy in the noonday. Why does the author chose the word ‘sun’ to represent the place where God lives?
7. 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.
8. 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. ‘ Come out from the grove…’ What does it mean?
9. 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 , What does the word ‘cloud’ represents in this stanza?
10. I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear To lean in joy upon our father’s knee; And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him and he will then love me. Why does the black boy wants to ‘shade him from the heat’?
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