The Little Black Boy (Songs of Innocence) by William Blake
The Little Black Boy (Songs of Innocence) by William Blake

The Little Black Boy (Songs of Innocence)

William Blake * Track #5 On Songs of Innocence

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The Little Black Boy (Songs of Innocence) by William Blake

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William Blake
About

From Blake’s Songs of Innocence, published in 1794, this was one of the series of poems which present an idealised world, in contrast to the harsh realities of late 18th and early 19th Century life during the time of King George III, known — ironically given the terrible social conditions of the tim...

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The Little Black Boy (Songs of Innocence) Annotated

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 receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.

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.

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.

The Little Black Boy (Songs of Innocence) Q&A

Who wrote The Little Black Boy (Songs of Innocence)'s ?

The Little Black Boy (Songs of Innocence) was written by William Blake.

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