God and The Little Boys

God and The Little Boys

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At first glance, upon reading the titles of William Blake’s The Little Boy Lost and A Little Boy Lost, one might mistake one poem for the other. Although these poems both discuss religion, they provide distinct perspectives on the subject. The former, published in Songs of Innocence, tells the tale of a boy separated from his father; the latter, from Songs of Experience, describes a child murdered by an overzealous priest. Ultimately, despite the shift from the visceral to the spiritual, A Little Boy Lost naturally follows in the steps of the poem that preceded it.

            While both The Little Boy Lost and A Little Boy Lost offer a perspective on religion, this perspective shifts greatly between the two poems. One reason for this lies in the subsequent poems: after The Little Boy Lost comes The Little Boy Found, a poem elaborating on how God enters the forest and appears to the boy “like his father in white” (4). Here Blake affirms the power of God, who stands as a bright light in the dark forest. In this poem God also demonstrates his humanity, both by kissing the child and leading him by hand back to his mother. Each of these acts invokes the body, bringing to mind lips and hands (5-6). After A Little Boy Lost, however, the following poem is titled A Little Girl Lost. The emphasis, then, lies on the loss, rather than the redemption. Equally important as the companion poems are the articles in each title; by using ‘the’ in the first poem, Blake indicates God’s knowledge of each individual child. In the latter he reduces the boy to one of many with the preface ‘a.’

            Another reason for the shift of religion as positive and guiding to dark and mysterious surfaces in the texts themselves. Both poems open with quotes, and both quotes mention a father. In the poem from Songs of Innocence, the boy begs his father to slow down, saying, “Father, father, where are you going? / Oh do not walk so fast” (1-2). Soon he retreats from this line of reasoning, hoping his father will so much as talk to him (3-4). In this poem, the father is a biological one, rather than spiritual. This cold, uncaring father is juxtaposed with the Father, who comes across, ironically enough, as more human. As such, religion comes across positively. In A Little Boy Lost, the closest thing to a father surfaces in the priest, who stands as an authority figure in place of God himself. Unlike in the first set of poems in which God rescues the boy from peril, in the latter he does nothing. Here God becomes so distant he never makes an appearance in the poem. In his place is a priest who “In trembling zeal he seized his hair” (11) and “bound him to an iron chain” (20). This priest represents religion as seen in the second poem, as a destructive human force. The child, after all, prays to God about his inability to better love him, an innocent thought. Blake emphases this innocence in the title, by using the word little, and he repeats the word again when describing the boy’s clothing (19). In the first poem, religion saves; in the latter, it destroys.