29 pages • 58 minutes read
William BlakeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The highly rhythmic poem largely follows an AABB rhyme scheme with exceptions at the beginning and toward the end. The first four lines contain an alternate rhyme scheme, that is, ABAB: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.” The second deviation occurs in Lines 121-24, which all contain the same end rhyme and thus follow an AAAA rhyme pattern. Moreover, the end rhymes become increasingly similar in the last section of the poem, with lines often ending on “delight,” “Night” and “Light.” While the poem is mostly organized as couplets or pairs of rhyming lines, the first stanza follows the form of a ballad.
The poem’s meter is not very regular, though Blake mostly uses the iamb—a stressed sound following an unstressed sound—as his basic foot. The most common meter is the iambic tetrameter, containing four (tetra) pairs of iambs, as in Lines 31-32 (emphases denote stressed syllables): “He who | the Ox | to wrath | has mov'd | Shall nev | er be | by Wo | man lov'd.
By William Blake
A Poison Tree
A Poison Tree
William Blake
London
London
William Blake
Night
Night
William Blake
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake
The Book of Thel
The Book of Thel
William Blake
The Chimney Sweeper
The Chimney Sweeper
William Blake
The Garden of Love
The Garden of Love
William Blake
The Lamb
The Lamb
William Blake
The Little Boy Found
The Little Boy Found
William Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
William Blake
The Sick Rose
The Sick Rose
William Blake
The Tyger
The Tyger
William Blake
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection
View Collection