Abigail Joseph Consider Blake’s presentation of nature in ‘Songs of Innocence’. Nature is presented in a variety of ways by William Blake in ‘Songs of Innocence’. Depictions swing from nature being liberated and wild with sinister undertones to being a manifestation of and equal to mankind. The reader sees the multi-faceted duality of nature in often being a protector yet not being sheltered itself amongst other examples in ‘Songs of Innocence’. Nature is described by Blake as ‘desert wild’ in ‘The Little Girl Found’. Both words are profoundly negative, indicating a hostile environment, one which lacks water (‘desert’) so therefore cannot sustain life. The adjective ‘wild’ ascribes a certain untamed quality to nature in having a discontinuous disposition. The unusual order of the words with the noun preceding the adjective emphasises the discomfort that can be implied to be affecting the parents in this poem. Much imagery of a lion is present in ‘The Little Girl Found’ with it ‘smelling’ its ‘prey’ and releasing a ‘growl’ at the end of the poem. These serve to cement the lion as an authoritative figure in being a predator and growling is a public confirmation of that. This presents nature as being free in terms of being autocratic with the lion seemingly putting itself in a position of high status and being free to do so. The harsh reality of nature is also described here in terms of the food chain present in nature and the lion soon to play its part as a consumer. These features also appear in ‘Night’ when ‘wolves and tigers howl for prey’. The choice of animals by Blake here using big cats like tigers as well as wolves emphasises the role of survival in nature with animals having to feed on each other. The use of the verb ‘howl’ makes this less-idyllic aspect of nature seem more haunting and affecting with a wider reach regarding how far the howls can be heard. In being wild like this, nature can also be found to be liberated in not being controlled or tamed. This is evident to how many birds Blake writes of in ‘Songs of Innocence’. In ‘The Echoing Green’ there is mentioning of a ‘skylark and thrush’, a ‘merry sparrow’ and a ‘pretty robin’ in ‘The Blossom’. Birds are creatures of flight, one of few qualities man does not possess naturally but is instinctual for birds to be free like this, so much so that in ‘The Schoolboy’, institutionalised education is likened to expecting a ‘bird that is born for joy/ Sit in a cage and sing’. This quotation highlights the fact that the happy freedom birds have is natural to them. The quick transition from ‘joy’ to ‘a cage’ emphasises Blake’s opposition to traditional education as well as making the natural, joyous state of birds attractive. This is further emphasised in ‘The Little Girl Lost’ when the lion ‘gambolled around’, suggesting an enjoyable reckless abandon possessed by nature. Margaret Bottrall wrote that Blake ‘idealised individuals of nature, seeing them as superior to bound man’. This suggests Blake nearly resented his being a man and perceived animals as being greater in freedom and other aspects which explains why birds with their individual flight is presented in a strongly positive way here as well as Blake advocating mankind becoming more like animals to enter a purer and more natural state. Blake regularly uses nature as a medium for expression of ideas and a metaphor for humans in his poems. This is done most prominently in ‘A Dream’ where Blake crafts an entire scene with a ‘glowworm’ and ‘beetle’ possessing roles interchangeable with human ones. The five stanzas are mainly comprised of rhyming couplets, adding a feeling of completeness to the poem as can be observed in nature in terms of its perpetuity. The emmet assumes the role of a nurturing mother, saying ‘Oh my children! Do they cry?’. The punctuation used suggests being fraught and desperate much like a human mother and parent, similar to ‘The Little Girl Found’ when Lyca’s parents show the depths of their parental love by traversing ‘Over valleys deep/ While the deserts weep’. The rhyming couplets used here and in the rest of the poem serve to create miniature scenes isolated from each other. The deserts appear to reflect the same distraught feelings of the parents, with Blake implying the similarities between man and nature. This is also evident in how Blake frequently endows creatures of Abigail Joseph nature with conventional human qualities, particularly emotions. In ‘A Dream’, an ‘emmet’ is described as being ‘troubled’, a complex emotion suggesting a minimum amount of cognition possessed by the emmet to feel this way. In ‘The Blossom’, a ‘sparrow’ is described as being ‘merry’. More positive imagery is present in ‘Laughing Song’ detailing ‘when the green woods laugh with the voice of joy/…And the grasshopper laughs’. These varying feels can be seen as unconventional expressions by Blake with regards to his religious background. This is because the Bible explains animals being created first and then man, made to rule over the animals, a rather mankind-centric perspective, elevating the position of humans above that of nature’s creatures. The way in which Blake adds typically human attributes to nature and its animals equalises the scale, removing the disparity, bringing nature and man closer together. This close relationship is particularly clear in ‘A Cradle Song’ when Blake describes a child as having ‘dovelike sighs’ and ‘dovelike moans’, playing upon the innocence and purity associated with a dove (usually visualised by the reader as being white) and connecting this to identical features found in children. There is also a gentleness added due to the types of sounds being made being quite soft to the ear in reality. A specific duality can be noted in Blake’s presentation of nature in being a source of comfort and refuge for the humans it is, apparently, so similar to. However, this does not seem to be reciprocated as nature seems to fend for itself in ‘Songs of Innocence’. Nature assumes a protective role in ‘The Little Girl Lost’ when the lost girl after wandering for days finds ‘underneath this tree’ to sleep. This could be superficially seen as merely the tree providing shelter for the girl here. As the girl is sleeping there, entering arguably one of man’s most vulnerable states, the tree’s role as safe keeper could be bolstered. A different perspective may look beyond the roles of nature, noting Blake’s Christianity, and see the tree as a metaphor for the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Genesis. After, fruit was taken from it, the Fall of man occurred which may be what this ‘sleep’ truly is, describing the entry of sin into the world inducing a depth of ignorance akin to being unconscious in sleep. ‘Night’ also ascribes a watchful protection to nature, describing how the ‘moon…/…Sits and smiles on the night’. The moon was long seen to be an astronomical representation of women in constantly changing in terms of lunar phases as well as the resulting effects on tides. As the moon is sitting, this could be reference to its stable position in the sky and the smiling suggests it being content, much like how a mother would be watching its children play. As the moon appears at night, it is almost lessening the danger and fear that is associated with night by providing light. However, nature does not seem to receive the vigilant protection it gives out, particularly at night when humans will retreat into their safe homes, it remains outside with no protection. In ‘The Echoing Green’, as night comes Blake describe the ‘darkening green’ that has sinister connotations with impending night time that the ‘green’ is left to face, alone. Nicholas Marsh writes that nature in ‘The Echoing Green’ is ‘a multipurpose refuge for humans yet it cannot be taken in’. This highlights the injustice in nature’s position in being of much use to others whilst it is not aided or abetted in any way. Therefore, it can be questioned if Blake, throughout ‘Songs of Innocence’, was clearly representing the atonement of man and nature. This becomes more debatable in how the reader can observe nature being objectified in some poems in ‘Songs of Innocence’. ‘The Shepherd’ idealises the occupation in merely observing nature’s occurrences when he ‘hears the lamb’s innocent call,/ And he hears the ewe’s tender reply’. The shepherd, perhaps representing humanity, is a distanced and passive figure, looking on. This could be seen as objectifying of nature as the scene is almost utopian with the shepherd being unworldly, it is not an accurate representation of nature that, in reality, is not a rural idyll only. In ‘The Lamb’, Blake can be seen to assume a near sardonic tone with repetition of ‘Little Lamb’. The alliteration adds an infantile aspect to the scene and is rather diminutive of the lamb. The poem is littered with many Abigail Joseph question marks after questions that have an assumedly rhetorical feel to the narrator but may be felt as mockery by the lamb. It suggests that the lamb is lacking in knowledge and, what can assumed to be the human narrator, has to ‘tell’ the lamb soupçons of information each time in a rather patronising way. As the human is telling the lamb and not speaking with it, the lamb can be seen to be inferior in needing to be informed. This reinstates the disparity between nature and man that Blake dissolves in other poems. Alternatively, the poem could be seen as a scathing attack on the way in which organised religions’ doctrines were related to new or long-established members in a call and response way (‘Dost thou know who made thee?/ Little Lamb I’ll tell thee) akin to the liturgical forms of worship present in some churches as Blake strongly opposed this. He was influenced by the theories of Jan-Jacques Rousseau in that humans’, especially children’s, could not accept ideas imposed on them in a virtually dictatorial manner but had to be learned independently for one’s own reasons. In summation, Blake mainly presents nature as a very positive entity in terms of the emotions it is deemed to be capable of possessing as well as its self-sacrificing roles as a protector and comforter. However, these features do not guarantee its own protection as it and its creatures largely have to fend for themselves, being wild, which provides freedom. Blake likens nature to man in ‘Songs of Innocence’ forging many links, suggesting that the two are more interchangeable than usually assumed to be.
