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The Works Of William Blake (pt.1)

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 recieve

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.

The SICK ROSE

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

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London

I wander thro' each charter'd street.

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.center

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry

Every blackning Church appalls,

And the hapless Soldiers sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlots curse

Blasts the new-born Infants tear

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

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