THE CLOD AND THE PEBBLE

Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
 
So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet:
But a pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.
 
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.

This poem was written by the English poet William Blake. Blake was a poet, painter and a printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake´s work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and visual arts.

According to Norhrof Frye, his Blake´s poems form “what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language”. Others have praised Blake´s visual artistry, at least one modern critic proclaiming Blake “far and away the greatest artist in Britain has ever produced.

Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical vision that underlies his work. <Wikipedia.org/wiki/William_ Blake>

The poem was published as a part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794. His spiritual beliefs are evidenced of here, in which he shows his own distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

Songs of Experience deals with the loss of innocence. Poems are darker, concentrating on more political and serious themes.

The disastrous end of the French Revolution caused Blake to lose faith in the goodness of mankind, explaining much of the volume’s sense of despair. Blake also believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community, which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, believe that children should be kept from becoming experienced entirely. In truth, he believed that children should indeed become experienced but through their own discoveries, which is reflected in a number of these poems. Blake believed that innocence and experience were “the two contrary states of the human soul”, and true innocence was impossible without experience.

We can say that this poem expresses symbolic references towards innocence and experience. For this reason I will talk about the Songs of Innocence too.

Songs of Innocence was first published by itself in 1789. It mainly consists of poems describing the innocence and joy of the natural world, advocating free love and a closer relationship with God. Its poems have a generally light, upbeat and pastoral feel and are typically written from the perspective of children or written about them.

Both, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, are a series of poems on how we see the world at different stages of our lives. They are, as Blake says himself, “shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul”.

The word “songs” invokes images of musicality, from the pastoral shepherd’s pipe of the Introduction of the Songs of Innocence to the bardic harp of The Voice of The Ancient Bard, concluding Songs of Experience. Each collection shows comparative images of children, babies, religion and the general world in which we live, and how we see things differently when we are first in a state of innocence and when we reach maturity. <www. Wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Experience>

The author of this poem was a Romantic poet. Romanticism was a movement is an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated around the middle of the 18^th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution. It was partly a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature in art and literature. The movement stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature.

We have to think that Blake lived in London in the 18^th century. The city was supposed to be a place full of opportunities but not the countryside. For this reason, people emigrated from the countryside to the city. This movement was called Industrial Revolution.

ANALYSIS OF THE POEM

Subject

The poem is about two different points of view from love. One of view is from The Clod and other is from The Pebble. The two views coexist and each view insures each other. The one can not never exist without the other.

The poem shows contrast between these two personalities (the clod and the pebble). The two contrasting points of view on love.

We can see the theme of love and the different aspects form it: love is altruistic, selfish..

Structure

It is not a complex poem. There are two statements from two characters and a comment. Two statements are opposite. It is a basic disagreement, a reply. We can find verbs such as “sung”, “warbled”, which represent the idea of music. We can find a reporting statement from the first speaker. The two participants talk about a third character who is not present. Only the Clod and the Pebble are present. The third character is “love”.

The first line and second line are coordinated but in the third line we have got a different succession because of the word “but” that means that there is a conflict.

We have an image: “Love seeketh not itself to please” means that love is selfless.

The line 1 and 2 indicates that love to the clod is good. The clod´s song is full of optimism

In the second stanza, we have the two participants. The clod is described as “trodden with the cattle feet”, that means that the clod has been trampled on but he does not mind what is going to happen because he accepts that.

In the first line we have the word “clay”, that means that the clod is soft, not hard. Soft means something sentimental, unrealistic, weak.

Later we have the other participant, the Pebble. The Pebble is hard. Hard means something cinical, unsentimental, realistic. He has a different point of view from the Clod. He is someone who has suffered of love. He described love as selfish.

We have another image: the Pebble of the brook. This image says where is the Pebble. In the brook. This image explains the negative vision that love is or what will be. The Pebble has a negative tone.

In the last line of second stanza, the word “meet” has the idea of “appropiate”.

Why the Pebble´s metres are appropiated? Perhaps there is an ambiguity. The two views are balanced one and other. The one can not exist without the other.

In the third stanza, we have a dark image.

The first line: Love seeketh only Self to please means that love is selfish and for this reason the word “Self” is capitalized.

In the first and third line we can observe: please-ease. These words have an idea of pleasure.

We have another image. Heaven has two meanings:

1) it is associated with the idea of pleasure.

2) It is associated with the idea of pain, suffering.

When the poem says: builds a Hell in Heaven´s despite means that the Pebble believes that love corrupts purity, honesty.

Rhyme

The rhyme scheme in the first and third stanza is the same: ABBA.

Personal Response

This poem shows the two contrasting views of love. We can find two participants and maybe we can say that the Clod is a female and the Pebble is a male. Why am I saying this? Because of the characters´s speech since if we see this poem from a context of sexual love, we see that the Clod shows a kind of pure and altruistic love (related with the concept of giving) that belongs to women; and the Pebble shows a selfish love (related with the concept of receiving) that belongs to men.

This poem has been interesting because shows differents points of view. These points of view are present in real life since when we fall in love, our relationship can be good (an altruistic love) or bad (selfish love). You decide what kind of love you want to have. But sometimes it does not depends on you.