Nurse's Song (Experience): Plot
Nurse’s Song (Experience): Plot
- This version of ‘Nurse’s Song’ is more melancholic and bleak than its innocent counterpart.
- The song is recited by the nurse who’s assessing her charges continuing to play as day turns to evening. This is an echo of the innocent poem.
- She ignores their plea to play longer, enforcing her role as an authoritarian figure, which stands in contrast to the nurturing nurse in the innocent version.
- Her tyrannic intervention robs the children of their childish games, forcing them into the world of experience.
Nurse’s Song (Experience): Structure & Language Techniques
- The poem is composed of four quatrains, each following a consistent ABCB rhyme scheme. This structured form contrasts the poem’s darker themes.
- Enjambment is employed frequently. This enhances a sense of fluidity and continuity, reflecting both the children’s play and the nurse’s stream of consciousness.
- Consonance is used, particularly the sound ‘s’, which creates a hissing effect, enhancing the menacing atmosphere.
- Contrast between this poem and the version from innocence collection accents the transformation from joy to despair.
Nurse’s Song (Experience): Themes & Linking Poems
- Authority and Control: The Nurse, as an authority figure, dampens the children’s spirit of enjoyment.
- Loss of Innocence: The poem links to ‘The Garden of Love’ where the speaker recognises the loss of innocent joy due to the imposition of religious and societal expectations.
- Nature vs Nurture: The poem contrasts an innate joy in natural play with the Nurse’s artificial imposition of rules and limits.
Nurse’s Song (Experience): Key Quotes
- “Whisperings are in the dale”: Represents secrets and unrest, contrasting ‘sounds of joy’ in the innocence version.
- “Youthful day is fled”: Metaphor for the loss of childhood and its joyous activities.
Nurse’s Song (Experience): Poet & Context
- Blake’s critique of authoritative institutions is evident. His view: they restrict freedom and impose corruption on innocent individuals.
- Blake’s radical views about children and their natural innocence contrasted the prevailing attitude of his time that saw children as ‘adults in training’.