THE LITTLE VAGABOND

Subject: English Poetry Siglos XIX y XX. Grupo: A

Student’s name: Cuñat Manzanera, Sandra

Title of the paper: “The Little Vagabond”

Author: Blake, William

General Information: The poem was published as a part of his collection “Songs of Experience” in 1794. “Songs of Experience” is a 1794 poetry collection forming the second part of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”.

INTRODUCTION

In “The Little Vagabond” we can find that it is light hearted but has a deeper meaning. The point the child is trying to make is that worship should be a pleasure not a trial.He lives in the street and criticises the church because of its hypocrise.

"The Little Vagabond" resurfaced in 1963 in Hazard Adams's William Blake: A Study of the Shorter Poems. Adams calls attention to the poem's "rolling anapestic gait" which suggests an alehouse song, and thereby enforces "the irony of the child's situation" (267-68). The child's argument for physical gratification indicates "a marriage of heaven and hell, a rejection of the body-soul opposition" (268). Adams notes that although the "child's solution will be considered impertinent,... it is impertinent only in the mouth of an adult" (268). Still, the critic claims, the poem is ineffective because there is "not enough incisiveness in the child's speech. He is not...quite impertinent enough" (269).

POEM AND PICTURES

The Little Vagabond

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm
Besides I can tell where I am use'd well,
Such usage in heaven will never do well.

But if at the Church they would give us some Ale
And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale;
We'd sing and we'd pray, all the live-long day;
Nor ever ance wish from the Church to stray,

Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing.
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring:
And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Chua
Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch.

And God like a father rejoicing to see,
His children as pleasant and happy as he:
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel
But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel.

Retrieved from http://www.gailgastfield.com/experience/soe17.html

THEME

The little vagabond, living in the world of Experience, describes very plainly his naive notion of an ideal existence with parson and schoolmistress transformed into figures of benevolence. In the circumstances he imagines God as a loving father, and the illustration above is an image of divine forgiveness, the light around the Godhead dispelling the gloom of the forest of materialism and Experience. In the scene below, a family of father, mother and three children are warming themselves at a blazing fire.

DICTION

Wordfields can be grouped around social rôles and institutions *3*: The Little Vagabond is a young "stray cat" of society (see stray in 2,4) with no home, job etc.(cf. the chimney sweepers, who have some sort of employment at least); his primary link to society is his Mother (1). Probably by former experience, he has some knowledge about Church; hisfeeling is that it is cold (1) both as a place and as the institution of restrictive religious education.

He knows the functions of the Parson (3,1) and dame Lurch (3,3f.), the school-mistress *4*, who sets an example as a church-goer and has the children "follow the rules".

The Ale-house (1) is the adult world's legitimate place of joy and amusement, the boy either naively or sarcastically remarks that it is healthy & pleasant & warm. Other aspects associated with an ale-house are transferred to the boy's notion of an "ideal" Church: (2) Ale (stimulating and "warming" effect), a pleasant fire... (tangible heat as opposed to the fire of candle light), activities: regale (provide with food and drink, and/or entertainment), sing and drink in (2) and (3), kiss in (4).

Positive feelings are associated with the ale-house atmosphere: (3) [be] happy as birds in the spring (note sexual connotations: behaviour of animals in the mating season); (4) children .. pleasant and happy.

The collocation of mundane and ecclesiastical elements has an ironical effect which for some readers may verge on blasphemy: (2) fire  + souls, sing + pray, (3) preach + drink + sing. Ambiguity serves the same purpose: (2) [souls] to regale (s.a. physical aspect of  nourishment vs. in elevated diction: give spiritual pleasure), sing and pray (referring to drinking songs or psalms?); (3) preach (sermon or even bawdy talk?) + drink (Communion wine or ale?) + sing (s.a.); (4) God like a father...; it can hardly be a sign of fatherly responsibility tolet children participate in this kind of exhilaration;  rejoicing (jubilating in a spiritual or earthly sense?) to see .. [ / ] His children as pleasant and happy as he (God in a state of profane happiness?); kiss him and give him both drink and apparel; would he even invite the evil one to join in the celebration of the holy service? (apparel  < lit. > =  decorative elements of the priest's garment, or the garment itself, i.e. the cassock or chasuble.)

Repetition: The apostrophe Dear Mother, dear Mother reminds of a repeated call for help; Dear, however, sounds rather over-emphatic or formal for a vagabond child in this context (irony). Repeatedly, activities of semantically ambiguous qualities are ironically referred to different characters and aspects.

SYNTAX AND STRUCTURE

The enumeration of ideas within repetitive And...patterns is typical of a child's language and spontaneous speech. The fact that we can still make out the child behind the acrimony of speech makes the criticism even bitterer.Other elements make plain and credible that the boy has a sharp sense of reality and is capable of using irony and sarcasm as rhetorical devices:

negative aspects are given in present or future tense (1), positive imagination is expressed in conditional mode (would..., might...) in (2) - (4); the Little Vagabond demonstrates quite complex thinking by using relatively

complex sentence structures:  conditional clause in the first two lines of (2), introduced by if + would (ironically assuming readiness of the Church or the boy's "polite" request) + subsequent main clause + subordinate clause

(Nor..). In (3) the structural pattern of the conditional sentence is carried on, with an embedded relative clause in the present tense; (4) contains a participle clause within the main clause + subordinate adversative clause introduced by But...

An interesting aspect is the "alternating" use of closed and open couplets, corresponding with the train of thought, from (1) to (4).

Predominantly anapaestic tetrametre is used (lively, "bubbling" speech).

The rhyme pattern of the poem is A.A.B.B.C.C.D.D.E.E.F.F.G.G.H.H

The poem consists of four quatrains and the verses on the poem are endecasyllabes.

CONCLUSION

D.G. Gilham understands the boy's attack on joyless religion to have "the force of being pointed and true. As he is a vagabond he has known charity administered as a duty by a cold hand, and has also observed, as anyone may, the austerities, repressions and disapprovals of religious bigots" (198-199). The "Little Vagabond" recognizes that if we would let our appetites alone, "they might have an opportunity to assert their divine nature" (199). Yet, Gilham claims, the poem's clumsy and juvenile rhythm forces us "to examine [the child's] sincerity despite our awareness of his misery" and the reader should recognize that "a church of drinking parsons and elated congregations does not seem more responsible or mature than one of 'fasting and birch'" (200- 201).

Later critics have scrutinized the poem more closely. Zachary Leader's Reading Blake Songs contests Gilham's complaint that "the vagabond's vision is too earthy" (174). The boy's view of Heaven is one, Leader suggests, "repeatedly endorsed by Innocence" (174), yet even so, his innocence appears affected; he is "distanced and calculating, much too knowing to be truly innocent" (175). The boy's vision of God as Urizen rather than Christ (in the engraving) is another indication that he is not to be trusted.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience, with an Introduction and Commentary by Sir Geoffrey Keynes. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York in association with The Trianon Press, Paris. 1967.

Katherine Montwieler (December 1995). http://www.english.uga.edu/wblake/SONGS/45/45montw.bib.html

Juergen Matthias Schroeder  (c) 7 JAN 2002. http://www.englishromantics.com/rom_analyses3.htm#vagabond

http://www.eliteskills.com/c/1733

Blake, William. Selected Poetry and Prose. Edited by David Punter. Ed. Routledge. 1988, London.

Blake, William. Selected Poetry. Edited by Michael Mason. Oxford University Press, 1994.