Analysis of The Little Black Boy
William Blake 1757 (Soho) – 1827 (London)
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved 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, pointed 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 sunburnt 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 and 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
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.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD XDXA EXEX FGFG CHCH FCFC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (71%) |
Metre | 1101100101 0111111111 1111010101 1111110111 110110101 0101010111 111101011 0101010111 1101011111 0111011101 01001010101 100101001 0111110101 1111110111 011100111 1101010101 11101110111 0111011111 10111011101 0111011101 111101011 0111110101 1111011111 0101111111 1111011111 11010110101 0111011101 0111011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,249 |
Words | 250 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 132 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 35 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 29, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 617 Views
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