Blake - Nurses Song essays

Blake - Nurse's Song essays We all enter into this life wide-eyed and idealistic. Each day we interact, learn, and experience what life has to offer. At some point, these experiences seep into our being and transform us from the innocent babe of childhood into a supposedly mature adult. What causes this theft of innocence? Do we all succumb in the end? These issues are brought forth in a book of poetry by William Blake. The first section of his work deals with the idea of our blossoming innocence. Once he has fully developed this theme, he moves on to critique the idea of experience and the benefits or drawbacks contained within. To juxtaposes these two very contrasting ideas, Blake writes paired poems that are contained within the separate sections. He is trying to show us each notion through its opposite and presenting the belief that ones view is dependent solely upon the attitude with which one perceives the situations surrounding him. The idea that we can only understand a theme through the eyes of its opposite is nothing new. Along these lines we see that innocence can only be viewed when it is lacking and you are in a state of experience. Our view of experience cannot be seen in this same light though. It is impossible to directly view experience in a state of innocence because we have not yet entered into this realm of being; therefore, we can only view and judge our new found experience through the memories we hold onto of our original innocence. The bottom line ultimately holds though, in order to gain full understanding it is imperative to examine one theme through the use of the other. To comprehend this abstract idea, Blake provides us with a great example in The Nurses Poem. One of the first things to note are the similarities between the first two stanzas of each poem. Many of the words are shared between the two and even the r...