William Blake's 'Auguries Of Innocence'
Need For A Revolution
Auguries of Innocence by William Blake was published in 1863, assumed written in 1803. William Blake, a British poet from the Romanticism movement, wrote Auguries of Innocence full of paradox and mixed feelings. Blake used to have trouble with authority, and he expresses this need of freedom through his poem. This poem, thanks to its imagery, let the reader make his own interpretation of life and political views of the author. William Blake used the image of animals to reflect the behavior of society. Usually animals are seen as fierce and pure, they live through the the law of retaliation : the strongest will live. But here the animals are personified. Notice that every time an animal is mentioned, the first letter of the word is capitalized, “Wolfs & Lions’’ or “Horse’’, as if they are human beings (Blake 19, 11) . They only fight to survive. Like the philosopher Aristote said :“ man is a political animal’’. When an animal is depict, the animal is suffering like “A Skylark wounded in the wing’’ or “ A dog starvd at his Masters Gate’’ (Blake 15, 9). Blake sees the current government as an oppression, and Auguries of Innocence could be interpreted as an call for revolution. He is angry, he is warning the opponent, “The wanton Boy that kills the Fly Shall feel the Spiders enmity’’ (Blake 34 and 35) . The government, is seen as the enemy, it referred as “Masters’’ (Blake 9). The diction used is negative such as …show more content…
Indeed the first quatrain has a dactylic pentameter rhythm ( ABAB ) with the first syllable stressed and followed by two unstressed syllables. Whereas the rest of the poem is an iambic tetrameter rhythm ( CCDD ) with the first syllable unstressed and the second one stressed. We can also notice that the rhymes are constructed with hard and whistling consonance such like [s], [t], or [r]. They reinforce the angriness and the author feelings toward the politics of his
Auguries of Innocence by William Blake was published in 1863, assumed written in 1803. William Blake, a British poet from the Romanticism movement, wrote Auguries of Innocence full of paradox and mixed feelings. Blake used to have trouble with authority, and he expresses this need of freedom through his poem. This poem, thanks to its imagery, let the reader make his own interpretation of life and political views of the author. William Blake used the image of animals to reflect the behavior of society. Usually animals are seen as fierce and pure, they live through the the law of retaliation : the strongest will live. But here the animals are personified. Notice that every time an animal is mentioned, the first letter of the word is capitalized, “Wolfs & Lions’’ or “Horse’’, as if they are human beings (Blake 19, 11) . They only fight to survive. Like the philosopher Aristote said :“ man is a political animal’’. When an animal is depict, the animal is suffering like “A Skylark wounded in the wing’’ or “ A dog starvd at his Masters Gate’’ (Blake 15, 9). Blake sees the current government as an oppression, and Auguries of Innocence could be interpreted as an call for revolution. He is angry, he is warning the opponent, “The wanton Boy that kills the Fly Shall feel the Spiders enmity’’ (Blake 34 and 35) . The government, is seen as the enemy, it referred as “Masters’’ (Blake 9). The diction used is negative such as …show more content…
Indeed the first quatrain has a dactylic pentameter rhythm ( ABAB ) with the first syllable stressed and followed by two unstressed syllables. Whereas the rest of the poem is an iambic tetrameter rhythm ( CCDD ) with the first syllable unstressed and the second one stressed. We can also notice that the rhymes are constructed with hard and whistling consonance such like [s], [t], or [r]. They reinforce the angriness and the author feelings toward the politics of his