English Poetry, XIX & XX Century. Facultad de Filología, Universidad de Valencia
Professor: Dr. Vicente Forés
Student: Marcos A. Palao Contreras
From “Visions of the Daughters of Albion”, by
William Blake
The subject of the poem is about the yearnings of the Daughters towards
their freedom. We also see that in the first lines of the poem the author sets
the situation of the main characters of the poem: The Daughters. And it is
stated that they are enslaved, although the reader –at least at a first glance-
does not know where they are shut. This is probably the main theme of the poem:
confinement and the wish for freedom.
There are also some other ideas in the poem as can be the innocence (of the daughters, of Oothoon in this case) when they say “I dare not pluck thee from thy dewy bed”; and also about the eternity of beauty that can be seen when the nymph replies saying “ …the soul of sweet delight can never pass away…”.
I’ve to say that
although I do not know who Bromion or Theotormons are, the meaning is expressed
on a quite straightforward manner, or at least I understand it as how we
fragile beings are submitted to the desires of those who have the power,
whether this means parents, governments or just the ideas that rule a society
in a given moment of history, and specially those who use fear to achieve what
it is been set out to, and maybe the last two sentences are the ones that best
exemplify this as they read “…they are obedient…they obey the scourge: their
daughters worship terrors and obey the violent”.
The poem I think
has a general wail tone as the daughters –or Oothoon in his case- do not feel
comfortable where they are and they want to go somewhere else, to America, and
Oothoon expresses it very clearly when she says “…and thus I turn my face where
my whole soul seeks…”, although there seems to be a general tone of woe in the
poem for what the sufferers feel – the daughters- and what those in power
–Bromion and Theotormons- transmit, actually the poem talks about Theotormons’
reign, where Oothoon takes her impetuous course, and maybe it is an impetuous
course because of the fears she feels towards Theotormons’ reign or about
passing through it.
The structure and
form of the poem is what really shocks me, because neither the metre nor the
rhyme seem to exist. On the one hand, the metre of the verses seem to be kind
of anarchical as every one of them have a different quantity of syllables,
which vary from thirteen to sixteen, something I can not understand. On the
other hand, rhyme is awkward because none of the verses seem to rhyme with none
of the others.