Blake Key Quotes

Question 1

A Song

Answer 1

Sleep, sleep, happy child!
All creation slept and smiled.
Sleep, sleep, happy sleep,
While o’er thee doth mother weep.

Sweet babe, in thy face
Holy image I can trace;
Sweet babe, once like thee
Thy Maker lay, and wept for me:

Wept for me, for thee, for all,
When He was an infant small.
Thou His image ever see,
Heavenly face that smiles on thee!

Smiles on thee, on me, on all,
Who became an infant small;
Infant smiles are his own smiles;
Heaven and earth to peace beguiles.

Question 2

Which form is London written in?

Answer 2

Iambic tetrameter: however it is broken in significant points (eg ‘And the hapless soldiers sigh’/’Marks of weakness, marks of woe’) - reflects the authors surprise, or how it has interrupted the natural cycle/comment on industrialisation?
Division between lines of 7/8 syllables, reflects division in London society?
Rhyme scheme: reflects cyclical nature of London life?

Question 3

Cavill

Answer 3

‘There is direct criticism of the Church’s involvement in exploitation and oppression’

Question 4

Gilham

Answer 4

‘Blake contrasts the self-centred greed of the state of Experience with the possibilities of our innocent moments’

Question 5

Natoli

Answer 5

‘The preservation of innocence by falsification of experience’

Question 6

Yoder

Answer 6

‘For Blake, once Christ assumes the human form, everything about the human form becomes by definition Christ-like’

Question 7

T.S. Eliot

Answer 7

Blake’s poetry has a ‘peculiar honesty which, in a world too frightened to be honest, is particularly terrifying’

Question 8

Bernard Nestfield-Cookson

Answer 8

‘prophet of universal brotherhood’