Monday, October 8, 2012

What literary devices show the innocence and experience in William Blake's "Nurse's Song"?

As with many of the poems in Blake's brilliant
Songs of Innocence and Experience, there are two poems entitled
"Nurse's Song," which although they possess similarities, are very different in terms of
their tone and the message they convey. The first song, extolling innocence, presents us
with a picture of children's happiness as the children are allowed to play "till the
light fades away" before coming home to bed. The children are shown to be innocent and
at one with nature, choosing to remain outside playin with the "little birds" and the
"sheep." The alliteration in this poem helps establish the childlike view of innocence
in such lines as:


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Then the little ones leaped and shouted and
laughed...



Note the
repetition of the "l" sound and how it helps create a light tone whilst also making this
poem almost like a nursery rhyme.


In the opposite poem, the
same sound of children playing evokes a very different reaction in the nurse.
Onomatopoeia is used to create a more sinister and foreboding tone through the reference
to "whisperings are in the dale," and the way that "spring" and "day" are used as
metaphors for youth and innocence, and "winter" and "night" are compared to experience
and the necessity for "disguise" creates a much darker picture.

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