From Blake’s Songs of Innocence. published in 1794, this was one of the series of poems which present an idealised world, in contrast to the harsh realities of late 18th and early 19th Century life during the time of King George III, known — ironically given the terrible social conditions of the time — as the Romantic Era. Each poem in the “Songs of Innocence” category is matched by a grim portrayal in Songs of Experience. The contrast is Blake’s method of social protest.

The song is essentially a lullaby in praise of the mother-child bond. Children were viewed by Blake as innocent and vulnerable, and the role of the parent was to protect and nurture, a theme of Romantic poetry. Blake, along with Wordsworth, another Romantic poet, also believed that children had an existence in heaven before birth, and were therefore closely linked to God and Jesus.

The thought that would have immediately sprung to the minds of Blake’s contemporaries was the mother-and-child in this poem reflected Jesus and Mary, who would provide protection and nurture. Jesus’s tears as a baby would have been shed for all children.

The poem is clearly an idealised picture. Maternal death in childbirth was common and babies in poor households were often stunted and frail, with high death rate. Blake chose to depict the ideal as a contrast to reality. His poem Infant Sorrow is worth reading for comparison.

Structure
The song comprises eight quatrains, that is, four-lined stanzas. The metre is trochaic, that is the lines begin with a stressed first syllable, for example, ‘Chase not slumber ….’ in stanza four. Other lines are spondaic, that is with two equally stressed syllables, as in ‘Sweet babe in thy face.’ There are four metrical feet per line, forming tetrameters.

There is a regular AABB rhyme scheme, most of which are perfect, apart from the first couplet where ‘shade’ and ‘head’ are consonantly rhymed.

The overall effect is a gentle, rocking lullaby rhythm.

Language and Imagery
The language is deceptively simple and accessible, with repetition within lines, within stanzas and from stanza to stanza. For example, ‘Sleep,sleep’, ‘sweet dreams’ and ‘sweet sleep’ — a device known as anaphora. The last line of some stanzas are picked up by the first line of the following stanza, anadiplosis, for example, ‘smiles on thee’ in line four of stanza seven is repeated at the beginning of stanza eight.

The dominant image is of mother and child as an expression of the perfection of Mary and Jesus. References to angels, ‘holy image’ and ‘heavenly face’ reinforce this.

The lullaby is painstakingly crafted, as the detailed annotations explain.