The Little Black Boy

Some classes ago, we were asked to present our own interpretation of a chosen poem using Power Point presentation... Once again, the class was great! Each group interpreted the poem it had chosen in a different way: asking questions to the poem itself (good work Jan!), relating it to songs, using images, focusing on its historical / social context, giving emphasis to the author's biography, etc. I think we are doing a good job, let's go on working!

Below you will find the interpretation Janeth and I did. (I'd have liked to upload the PPp, but I'm not sure whether it is possible... :( )

THE LITTLE BLACK BOY by William Blake

The author…

• 1757-1827
• English poet, painter and printmaker.
• Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England.
• William never attended school and was educated at home by his mother.
• Blake abhorred slavery and believed in racial and sexual equality.



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.

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.

What do black and white convey in this first stanza?

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.

Why does the author chose the word ‘sun’ to represent the place where God lives?

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.

‘Come out from the grove…’ What does it mean?

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’ represent in this stanza?

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 want to ‘shade him from the heat’?