The excerpts we are given by Blake reflect an ironic, contrasting view of life. In Songs of Innocence, he portrays the innocence of young life, as unaware of the perils of the world, though even in many of these poems the characters are surrounded by the realities of the world. Scenes like the children playing in "The Echoing Green" show youth unawares of the natural order, of aging and death, though Blake's symbolism gives us this information. In youth every day must be a joy, a joy we parade in care-free sport. Blake insers into the 3d stanza "the old folk (who) soon they all say/such such were the joys/when we are all girls and boys", making us aware of our own time limit, and foreseeing the lament the portrayed children will one day have of their own lost youth. the children are rounded up at days end, and "sport no more seen," foreshadowing the end of "play" on this world, the "echoing green."

Blake's work in songs of innocence seems to be dual-minded, reflectin on themes of innocence and joy while writing into these happy poems the reality of an unkind world. Looking at "The Little Black Boy", we hear a child relating a story heard from his mother, in which she tells him we are put on this earth so we can "learn to bear the beams of love." She tells him that once we have learned love for one another then we will leave behind the black and white "clouds" that make up our physical appearance and rejoice together in God's love. This is a wonderful sentiment, and the little black boy states that he will shelter the white boy until he has learned love, and in return will win his affection. What Blake puts into the black boy's comments is a worldly view of racism, of which the child himself is unaware. The black boy is innocent of the secondary place he puts himself into in desiring to be seen the same as the white boy, to "be like him and he will then love me." His awareness of difference is there, but as a child he has not had the experience that will destroy his innocence later on.

I like how Blake contrasts views in both books of Songs. Like the contrast of both "The Chimney Sweepers," where in the Songs of Innocence, the sweepers go about their business knowing that even though their work is hard, they will achieve salvation through following their duty. They are ignorant of the fact that they are being abused. In Songs of Experience, however, the sweepers are aware of what an experienced reader of the first poem knows, that the world has taken advantage of the children's naivete--"Because I was happy upon the heath/And smil'd among the winter's snow:/they clothed me in the clothes of death/and taught me to sing the notes of woe." The sweeper is now aware of his abused situation and mortality. In the 3d stanza, the child states that because he sings and dances, the parents think he has no injury, but ignore the fact that he is singing songs of woe. It seems Blake is saying that the world corrupts out of jealousy, and pretends blindness to its own destructive tendencies.

Songs of Innocence is supposed to be a joyous celebration of youth and beauty and innocence, but really reflects youth's naivete of the harder, crueler world. The poems are ironic, since he presents to the reader images and phrases that set the characters up for the upcoming loss of that innocence. In Songs of Experience he merely strips away the veil, and presents the world in it's ugliest form, without the irony or dualism of the first book.Poems like "The Tyger" raise questions of the nature of evil and good, questioning the origins of the tyger, who is presented as a creation of evil, but created by God. So is God evil or ignorant? Is there a purpose or is there only destruction awaiting us all?The intro said that Blake had visions of God and of angels, so I figure he did believe in God, but it is hard to get a grasp on what he thought about God. His work has nothing good to say about the physical world, as it is always a corrupting influence.

The French Revolution
These were all incredible reads. Considering that the times these writers lived in was so rich in change must have been very exciting (unless you were "headed" to the guillotine). It was a time when people were throwing off the mantle of the king's "divine right" to rule, and were beginning to demand a more secular approach to life--not giving up God, but asking for their leaders to show responsibility to the people that allowed them to rule. And they were realizing that, yes, they had a say so in the way their Kings treated them, or spent money or traded.

Burke was typical of the aristocracy, wheedling and using emotional propaganda to convince the people that it was God's will that they remain poor and ill and illiterate, so that the heirarchy in place to protect the rich would remain strong. Burke uses emotional appeal to persuade his readers that the Revolution was a bad thing. He describes the Revolution as chaos and a mixture of follies (pg. 47), making the claim that revolution was unnatural, that what the people wanted was out of order with the natural world. He uses the analogy of a father passing on an inheritance to a child to indicate that the political system, and the inheritance of titles, land and power, was normal and worthy. He fully believes that some people are better than others, and deserve the life of privilege over others. On page 50 he begins an explanation of some of his ideas about equality. He writes that there should be equality of rights, but that some men are meant ot be privileged and rule or carry a title. The idea of opportunity surely never even occurred to him. That a man had the right to invest his bit of money and share in the revenues is normal to Burke, but he doesn't seem to see that few outside of the aristocracy could not afford a shilling extra. He perceived the revolution as a tsunami of disorder, and surely worried overly much over his own place in his society when the fight was over. I wonder if he even cringed when Marie Antoinette reportedly made the comment that if they can't eat bread, then let them eat cake. Oh well, off with her head.

Both Wollstonecraft and Paine vehemently disagreed with Burke; this is important because both were considered well-off, but Burke and those like him were able to dismiss their ideas because, in Wollstonecraft's case, she was "merely" a woman, and subject to emotional inappropriateness, and Paine was not a member of the aristocracy so had little to lose.Wollstonecraft made the argument that the revolution was a result of oppression, and greets Burke's compassion for the king and queen with outrage at his lack of concern for the thousands who've lived in squalor for ages(pg. 64). Paine uses less passionate language than Wollstonecraft, but makes the same points, namely that man is created in God's own image, and that "divine authority" is the right of man to do what is in his power to ensure his survival and his happiness, less the need for cake-eating queens and land-stealing kings.

Hi all, my name is Steve Peano. I'm in the night school at Mercer, finishing up my bachelor's in Human Services. I plan to go on to a Masters in Public Health. I work at River Edge, doing group counseling and activity therapy for kids with behavioral and emotional problems. I spend a lot of time reading and have a great interest in poetry. I'm taking this online course because I think it's interesting to do something new, and to fulfill my lit req for my degree. I can't say much towards anxieties about the class, but I am eager to see if I can keep up without the group meetings, which I find have always stimulated conversation and ideas better than taking turns typing. We'll see. I look forward to talking with everyon