William Blake (1757-1827)

The Little Black Boy

My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O! my soul is white;

White as an angel is the English child,

But I am black, as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,

And sitting down before the heat of day,

She took me on her lap and kissed me,

And pointing to the east, began to say:

"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,

And gives his light, and gives his heat away;

And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love;

And these black bodies and this sunburnt face

Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,

The cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice,

Saying: 'Come out from the grove, my love and care,

And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.' "

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;

And thus I say to little English boy,

When I from black and he from white cloud free,

And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat, till he can bear

To lean in joy upon our father's knee;

And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

And be like him, and he will then love me.

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Online text copyright © 2008, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of Toronto.

Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: William Blake, Songs of Innocence (1789). Blake's Illuminated Books, ed. David Bindman (Princeton, NJ: William Blake Trust; London: Tate Gallery, 1991-). See Vol. 2. PR 4142 B46 1991 ROBA.

First publication date: 1789

RPO poem editor: Northrop Frye

RP edition: 3RP 2.280.

Recent editing: 4:2002/3/14

Rhyme: abab