Blake

The Echoing Green

• 
  
• Idealised world
• Guardians in the form of Old John, "Old John with white hair/Does laugh away
  care" and the mothers "round the laps of their mothers" - the children are
  innocent, and need protection.
• The end is ominous, "darkening green". We learn to associate dark with evil in Blake, and so it seems that evil is even corrupting the Echoing Green(shorthanded to TEG because I'm lazy )
• Personification in the first stanza, "to the bells cheerful sound" again
  idealises the world here.
• Direct counterpart to London in Experience.
• Children are compared to birds, "Like birds in their nest" - similar to The
  Schoolboy, emphasising innocence of children.

The Divine
Image

• 
  
• Contrast to The Human Abstract, and A Divine Image. Though interestingly A
  Divine Image was left out of the final compilation....
• Sheperd imagery in the first stanza, showing God as the shepherd; Pslam 23,
  "The Lord is my shepherd"
• Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love are part of everyone - personifies these ideas,
  and shows how as they are God, and also in humans, we all have part of god in
  us.
• "In heathen, turk or jew" - probably politically incorrect now, but still.
  Shows how Blake saw everyone as having part of God in them, no matter what their
  religion.

The Chimney-sweeper

• 
  
• Ironic - attacks the church for preaching the message at the end, "So if all
  do their duty, they need not fear harm"
• Pathos for the characters, ""My father sold me while yet my tongue/Could
  scarce cry, "weep weep weep weep""
• Tom Dacre is shown as innocent, "that curled like a lambs back" - shaving of
  his lamb-like hair shows how he is thrust forcefully into experience.
• "Then naked and white" - in death the children are innocent again, like…