Compare the Way Blake Presents the Relationship Between Adults and Children in Nurse’s Song (Innocence) and Nurse’s Song (Experience.)

Compare the Way Blake Presents the Relationship Between Adults and Children in Nurse’s Song (Innocence) and Nurse’s Song (Experience.)

  • Submitted By: Hannahmac1
  • Date Submitted: 09/21/2008 8:29 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 712
  • Page: 3
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In the Nurse’s Song (Innocence) Blake shows children to be much wiser than adults, and the strength of his belief in the wisdom of children defies the teaching of his contempories, who thought that all children were essentially evil. In the Innocence poem the Nurse and the children have a mutual respect for each other, which allows the children to have their say without the Nurse’s authority being undermined: “’No no let us play, for it is yet day/ And we cannot go to sleep.’” The Nurse accepts the children’s desires, allowing them to stay out and play: “Well well go and play till the light fades away” she understands there disregard of her rules is not through lack of appreciation but through their inherent need to enjoy as much of daylight as possible.

From the beginning of the poem Blake shows just how much pleasure the Nurse takes in watching the children play: “When the voices of children are heard on the green/ And laughing is heard on the hill/ My heart is at rest within my breast/ And everything else is still.” The narrator of the poem is the Nurse, and her contentment at the harmony the children have created for themselves within nature brings contentment within herself. She does not overshadow their innocence, but rather lets the enjoyment of the children progress naturally, in harmony with the nature around them, safe in the knowledge that the natural environment they are in will protect and care for the children.

However in Nurse’s Song (Experience) Blake presents the relationship between the Nurse and her wards as much more strained, as the voice of the Nurse is embittered and envious of the children’s enjoyment and freedom: “When voices of children are heard on the green/ And whisperings are in the dale/ The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind/ My face turns green and pale.” The fact that Blake begins the poems in the same way, yet the tone and character of the Nurse in each one so different, shows just how easy it is for adults to...

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