In this paper I am going to explain the differences and simmilarities of two poems: “A little boy lost” of William Blake and “

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I am going to explain the differences and simmilarities of two poems: “A little boy lost” of William Blake and “Thou art indeed just, Lord...” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

At first, we only have two different poems, two different authors and two different ages; then we could think that we are going to have a lot differences; but little but little we are going to explain how these two poems and these two autors have a lot of simmilarities.

The main topic of this paper is how the religion, particularly the Christianism was seen at these different ages by the point of view of William Blake and the point of view of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Although these poets were too different, William Blake was contrary of the church and Gerard Manley Hopkins was a priest, they both realised the corruption of the church, the corruption of people and the no coming into scene of God due to these facts.

For making easier to understand well all I am going to explain, I have divided the paper in some parts to follow a structure for not mix ideas. For that reason I think that the best way is to analyse the poems individually, this way permit to understand the meaning and the vision of the poet. Then we are prepared to confront the two poems, the two poets and the two visions of religion.

A LITTLE BOY LOST. William Blake.

“A little boy lost” is a poem written by William Blake, included in “Songs of Experience” written in 1789.

William Blake was a Romantic poet, painter and printmaker. He was not recognised by his work in his lifetime, but nowadays i well-recognised due to his poetic works and paintings. Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and for his philosophical vision that underlies his works.(1)

Focusing all the attenttion in the poem, I will begin talking about the structure. The poem is divided in six stanzas, and each stanza is divided in four verses. The rhythm used by Blake is the rhyme of the even verses in the first four stanzas, following in the fifth and sixth stanza the rhyme of the even and odd verses (e.g. 1st stanza: so, know; 5th stanza: heard, shirt – vain, chain).

As regards the rethorical figures, the poem is plenty of repetitions, metaphors, rethorical questions and semantic fields. Repetitions are clearly seen through all the poem as in verses 2 and 3 “nor” giving a sense of enumeration of ideas; verses 18 and 23 “the weeping parents wept in vain” showing the false paint of the parents or maybe the shame. There is also a repetition of same kind of structure that gives rhythm to the text too: verses 1, 5 and 7 “nought loves another as...”, “how can I love you”, “I love you like...”, this structures shows the debate that has the child comparing and questioning his love; in verses 11 and 19 “He led him by his little coat”, “They stripped him to his little shirt” the poet remarks that is a little boy with his little clothes and how they him. In addittion we can see rethorical question such as in verses 5 and 6 “and, father, how can i love you or any of my brothers more?” and in verse 24 “are such thing done on Albion’s shore?”, these are questions that do not need any answer, in the first question the boy is asking how he can love anyone more than himself, because this is what he see in that society; and in the second question is the own poet who asks to the readers if this was happening in England in those days. We encountoured some comparisons like in the verse 7 in which the boys compares the love that feels for his father with the love that feels for a bird: “I love you like the little bird...”. Through all the poem we find words that can be referred to different meanings at the same time and they can be treat as metaphors: verse 5 “father” could be referred to his own father, to the priest who is near him and also to God; verse 6 “brothers” could be his own brothers or also the brothers of the religious community; and finally verse 24 “Albion’s shore” is referred to Britain. The semantic fields that can be seen at the poem are: words relating to family (father, brothers, parents)and religious semantic field (priest, altar, holy mistery, holy place). In addittion there are a lot of words plenty of meaning, strong words such as “zeal, seized, fiend, iron chain, burned him...”.

Going on to the analysis of the meaning of the poem itself, it would be better start verse by verse to understand all what the poet wanted to transmit us. In the first and second stanza we can see a boy who is thinking and asking himself of the love. The first verse is the main idea of his monologue, anyone loves another as itself, the child cannot understand how someone can love anyone than itself. This is a good method of the poet for criticising the hypocresy of the society that say they love God or someone else, but this boy knows well the people and understands their hypocresy. At the second verse we have “venerates”, and we can imagine that the boy is thinking how he can love God more than himself, because in the intimity of the adult society he cannot see this thing. At the fifth and sixth verses the boy is asking to a “father” (own father, the priest or God) how can he love him more and in the next verses he compare the love that feels to him with the love that feels for a bird. At the third stanza stops to talk the boy and the poet starts to explain what it is occurring, a priest appears near to the child and the priest is listening what the boy is saying and with zeal seized his hear because what the boy is doing is to injury. In the 12th verse people admired the priest’s act “priestly care”, how they can think that this is a care? According to the Longman’s Dictionary care means “the proccess of looking someone, especially because they are ill, old, or very young”. But the boy is not ill or old; he is young, but for that reason, this is a childish commentary and cannot be treated as the priest do, because this is not a priestly care, this is a priestly violence. In the fourth stanza the priest and the boy are in the “altar high”, high show us how the priest is seen above all the people. The priest is comparing the boy with a fiend because he dared to say indisputable things about the holy mystery of their religion. In the next stanza the boy is trying to explain but nobody want to listen him, the parents are weeping but in vain, this is another type of hypocresy because the parents do not feel pain for his child, or maybe is a real weep, if they are weeping because of the shame that feel for having a child like this. In the next verses of this stanza the boy is treated like a fierce animal “bound him in an iron chain”. At the last stanza the boy was burned, but of course in a “holy place” probably to safe the child’s soul; and another time his parents are weeping. The poet finished with the metaphorical question “are such thing done on Albion’s shore?, referring Albion in this context to Britain.

William Blake tryes to transmit us the hypocresy of the society of his time and show us the treatment to the people who dared to say something that questioned the religious believe. Blake tries to show to the society of his days this injustice and also tries to fight with it. Furthermore there is a high critic to the established Church, that in this case burned a little boy because of a childish commentary about what is really happening in those moment. The little boy was not a fiend. The fiends were the society and the priest itself to make that atrocity to a child.

THOU ART INDEED JUST, LORD...

“Thou art indeed just, Lord...” is a poem written by Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1889 and it is included in his “Desolation Sonnets”. In the last four years of his life, Hopkins wrote a series of sonnets that expressed his deep distress at his failing health and a world where he seemed unable to find comfort in God. These are known as the Sonnets of Desolation. In March 1889 he wrote this sonnet. He died in June of the same year

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Victorian poet and a Jesuist priest. His 20th-century fame established him postumously among the leading Victorian poets. His experimental explorations in prosody (especially sprung rhythm) and his use of imagery established him as a daring innovator in a period of largely traditional verse. (2)

The poem is an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, it is to say, it can be divided in the first eight verses (octave) and in the las 6 verses (sestet). The rhyme used by Hopkins is ABBAABBACDCDCD, in the octave follow the same assonace rhyme (contend, end, friend, spend- just, must, dost, lust) and in the sestet follows with a different assonance (brakes, shakes, wakes – again, strain, rain).

In relation with the rethorical figures, the most significant thing that claims attention is the use of irony, in the beggining of the poem appears for first time “thou art indeed just, Lord”, Hopkins does not understand why God acts well with bad people whereas do not make anything with excellent people. Moreover, the first two verses is a sequence of Jeremiah 12, here the poet is trying to give more strenght to the poem and to himself, because he is putting his own words, expressing his discontent like a famous religious person also did, because this is a present topic in all the times. The poem, also is plenty of methapor like in the verses 9 and 10 “Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes/ Now, leaved how thick”, here the poet is comparing his life with leaved banks and brakes, comparing his life with nature; in verse 13 “time’s eunuch”, another time Hopkins is comparing his life with a leisure of time, because it seems to be that for God he does not do anything, because he is not receiving any recompense for all his life serving God, he feels impotent; in the 14 line “send my roots rain” other metaphore comparing with nature, the poet wants to grow up like plants. There is an antithesis in verse 5 “Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend”, the debate of this two terms is the debate of the poet itself, he has a mix of feelings that he cannot find the solution. Another aspect to underline is the treatment that Hopkins has with God, the poet speaks to God as a superior but also as a friend: “Lord”, “thee”, “Sir”, “Friend”; furthermore, the usage of this words and also in verse 1 “if I contend you” gives us the sensation that God is someone with whom you can talk and argue. Finally we are going to talk about the semantic fields, as I said before we find a lot of different words referred to God like “Sir, Lord...”; there is a predominant semantic field of nature: “banks”, “brakes”, “freety chervil”, “fresh wind”, “birds”, “send my roots rain”. There are also a lot of words with negative connotations like “contend”, “sinners”, “enemy”, “defeat”, “sots”, “trhalls”, that express perfectly the thoughts of the poet, all people who are sinners are succesful in life, while he has dedicated his life to God and he is disappointed in all he did.

Paying attention on the meaning that the poet wanted to transmit us, we started talking about the first two verses, the poet is making reference to a passage of Jeremiah 12, Hopkins is trying to give force to his critic to God. The poet is angry with God and replies to him because he thinks that what he pleads is just. In 3 and 4 verses Hopkins is asking why sinners prosper while all he wants to do ends in deception; the poet cannot understand God, because he believes that he has to have success and not the sinners. In the verse 5 the poet is contrasting who is God to him, an enemy or a friend, Hopkins is showing his doubts about his faith, because God is not clearly just as he thinks, God is compensating bad people, not the good. At the last three verses of the octave Hopkins is remarking another time that sinners prosper and do in their leisure time more than him in all the time he spends. In the sestet, at the first three verses the poet is talking about his life, a whole life dedicated to God, and compares it with the nature “banks and brakes... how thick”. In verse 12 Hopkins is explaining the beauty of nature, how birds can build, and contrasting this beauty with his frustration, because of he also wish this beauty and he tries to do it, but he cannot build. In verse 13 the poet compares him with an eunuch (a castrated man employed as a harem attendant or as a functionary in certain Asian courts (3)) because he feels impotent about all he does, he cannot do anything with success. In verse 14 Hopkins is claiming to God for help “send my roots rain”, due to he still has hope and faith on God.

The main topic of this poem is that Hopkins is criticising God because he has not achieved anything while sinners prosper and have success. Although Hopkins does not realise, he is also a sinner, because he is feeling jelaous instead of being happy because he has peace and love in his heart. As a priest he should be ministering the sinners, not looking resentfully to their success, and also not all the sinners prosper in life.

COMPARISON

To begin the comparison between the two poems I think that it would be interesting firstly to talk about of how the religion was seen at Romanticism and Victorianism.

Religion in the Romantic was influenced by the French Revolution.During the Romantic era many of the writers were drawn to religious imagery in the same way other writers were drawn to Arthurian or other ancient traditions in which they no longer believed. Religion was estheticized, and writers felt free to draw on Biblical themes with the same freedom as their predecessors had drawn on classical mythology, and with as little reverence. The mixture of disbelief in and fascination with religion evident in such works illustrates a general principal of intellectual history. For all that many of its features were reactions against the rationalist Enlightenment, Romanticism also incorporated much from the earlier movement, or coexisted with the changes it had brought about.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain, religious faith and the sciences were generally seen to be in beautiful accordance. The study of God's Word, in the Bible, and His Works, in nature, were assumed to be twin facets of the same truth. Religion occupied a place in the public consciousness, a centrality in the intellectual life of the age, which it had not had a century before and did not retain in the twentieth century.

Now I am going to explain the different lifes of both authors in relation with religion, because I think that is important to know some aspects that can be interesting for the contrast of them, to understand their points of view.

Blake had high affection for the Bible, he believed in God, but this affection was accompained by hostility for the established Church. His beliefs modified by a fascination with Mysticism and the unfolding of the Romantic movement around him. Although Blake’s attacks on conventional religion were shocking in his days, his rejection of religiosity was not a rejection of religiosity itself. Jesus, for Blake, symbolises the vital relationship and unity between divinity and humanity. The most important critic that Blake make to the Orthodox Christianity is that he felt it encouraged the supression of natural desires and discouraged early joy.

Hopkins’ passion for religion becomes clearly evident during his youth through his poems. His poems revealed a very Catholic character, most of them being abortive, the beginnings of things, ruins and wrecks, as he called them. In 1866, he converted to Roman Catholicism, during the Oxford movement. Hopkins was included into the Roman Catholic Church. He left Oxford to become a priest, and entered the Jesuit Order in 1868. This is the time when Gerard Manley Hopkins presented a conflict of a man torn between two vocations, religion and the aesthetic world. He also presented a heroic struggle of a man who was so dedicated to one profession that he deliberately sacrificed another profession based on the belief that God willed it to be so.

As we can see, William Blake and Gerard Manley Hopkins were extremely differents because of Blake was against established church whereas Hopkins was a jesuist priest. In spite of this, they have a lot of resemblance as we can see at the two poems that I have selected: “A little boy lost” & “Thou art indeed just, Lord...”.

In the poem of William Blake we find a critic of the church itself, we can see how a priest treats a little boy, and also a critic to the English society of those times, a society who see the cruelty of a priest and even so they admire the “priestly care”. In Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem we see the desesperation of a poet, the desesperation of a priest that is confronting his faith in God; because he has realised that, it seems to be, God gives prosperity and success to sinners while he and other good people always encounter obstacles to their succes.

But in both poems, and this is the most signigicant simmilaritie, the God who tell us to be lovely, peaceful... people is the God that do not make anything with injusties. They both criticize this “just God”, they are asking for reasons of that treatment to innocent people: “Are such thing done on Albion’s shore? (A little boy lost, verse 24)” and “Why do sinners’ ways prosper? (Thou art indeed just, Lord; verse 3).

For all the things that I have explained through all the paper, the best conclusion for it is only say that the main similarity between William Blake and Gerard Manley Hopkins is the topic of religion, particularly the doubts about God, how a just God can give this desolation, disappointment, cruelty treatment to good people and also give success and prosperity to the sinners.

1. William Blake

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

2. Gerard Manley Hopkins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins

3. . http://www.answers.com/topic/eunuch

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

- “Blake complete writings”. Edited by Geoffrey Keynes. Oxford University Press.1966.

-“Gerard Manley Hopkins, selected poetry”. Edited by Catherine Phillips. Oxford World’s Classics. 1996.

- “Studying poetry”. Barry Spurr. 2^nd edition. Palgrave Macmillan. 2006. New York.

Websites

Gerard Manley Hopkins