A Cradle Song Flashcards
“Sweet sleep Angel mild”
The ‘Angel’ is the first reference to Divine protection. And of course, in this fantasy world, the baby is happy
The mother clearly believes in the idea of a ‘guardian angel’ - From the era of the Romantics onwards there has developed the widely held belief that everyone has an angel assigned to guard them. This concept is probably based on Jesus’ comment in Matthew 18:10 regarding children, though it is not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.
reaching out to glorify the natural world, within which we live, in the face of a more subjective heaven, where the Gods reside. There is a revealing humanistic ‘heavenly’ innocence and purity that the mother praises in the child who holds “secret joys and secret smiles.” Notice how the “infant’s smiles and wiles” is capable of beguiling both heaven and earth alike.
“All the livelong night beguiles”
The third stanza is an interesting expression of the power of an ostensibly dependent infant. The mother responds to the baby’s needs because the baby ‘beguiles’, that is, charms or enchants.
The adjective ‘livelong’ is archaic
“Sleep sleep, happy sleep/ While other the thy mother weep”
The mother is sad and weeping, which seems to contrast the general tone of the poem. My guess is that the mother, gazing upon her child, knows that her child is destined to grow up, suffer, and die. As much as she would love to coddle and protect her infant, the harsh reality is that doing so is impossible. On a more cosmic scale, I would go as far as to assert that the mother here represents the Goddess, looking down upon “all creation” as it sleeps and realizing that Her beautiful creation is destined to die, that eventually our world, like everything else, will wither and pass from existence.
Suggests the mother feels as though she needs to evoke divine intervention
Why is the mother trying to lull her child and the reader into a dream land? Is this deceptive as an act or a representation of her love? What does this show about suffering on earth and living conditions?
Arguably the mother is the only character within the poems who does not corrupt the innocence of childhood
but how innocent is the infant in the poem? implying that the child is already growing up and will soon be an adult – sooner than the mother would wish.
“Thy maker lay and wept for me”
Shows a new dimension of suffering
Christians believe that, in Jesus, God became one with humanity. When Christ cried as a baby, he shared in the tears of all children, crying on their behalf, as it were. He also cried for all humankind, because he knew human pain and suffering as his own.
a manifestation of Blake’s belief that human babies had a spiritual existence with God before birth.
Links to ‘Infant Sorrow’
Parental authority
The mother is protective of the child but her denial of ‘woe’ may leave her child ignorant in his innocence and, therefore, vulnerable. - alternatively not corruptive
Perception of children
Blake’s idea that a young child can clearly see God echoes the Romantic sensibility articulated by Wordsworth, that children had an existence in heaven before the commencement of their earthly life.
What were the attitudes towards childhood?
God in man’s image
Blake demonstrates how the mother shies away from the implications of Jesus as a ‘man of woe’ to concentrate on his ‘smiles’ and establishment of harmony between God and humanity. She does this according to her own need to continue denying the dangers besetting her child.
