A Divine Image Analysis

A Divine Image in Songs of Innocence is a very idealistic form of the more realistic poem in Songs of Experience. In an ideal world the four traditionally Christian virtues ‘Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love’ would be found in the human heart. During the industrial revolution, Flake’s time, these virtues were replaced with the less perfect qualities of mankind; instead ‘Cruelty, Jealousy, Terror, and Secrecy reigned supreme in the human heart.

In Christian faith it is believed that mankind was made in God’s own image, we were perfect in all ways as we were made in God’s image but Eve ate rut from the tree of knowledge and then tempted Adam into doing the same even though they had been told not to, thus condemning future generations into a sinful existence.

Since that moment humankind has been seen as sinful. We are born sinners.

In the first poem Blake brings forth the beauty of mankind being created in God’s image and in the second we see the greater picture, we see how sinful and terrible mankind really is and that we truly are sinful creatures and are nothing of what the bible tells us to be.

The world prays to ‘Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love’ in times f distress and thank them for blessings bestowed upon them as they are representative of ‘God, our Father dear’. Through the personification of these four virtues they are made more human, and so making us seem more divine, as though we are purer than we really are.

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William Blake Divine Image

Personification Is used In the same way In A Divine Image in Songs of Experience but coupled with a harsher grouping of words bring about a completely different effect. In the second poem ‘Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the Human form divine, And Secrecy the human dress’, it is much more than a stone’s throw from the Image created In the first poem. Mankind is depicted as a beast, a creature with ‘Cruelty, Jealousy, Terror, and Secrecy reigning in its heart.

In A Divine Image In Songs of Innocence Blake does not only bring up religious Idea of man being created In divine Image but also that ‘Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love’ are characteristics that man Is essentially born with regardless of his origin or belief since ‘heathen, Turk or Jew, we are all created In the Lord’s Image and since Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, There God Is dwelling too’ these characteristics must Ideally be found In each and every man, woman and child since we are all created In God’s Image.

In the second poem, A Delve Image from Songs of Experience, Flake’s choice of words reflect the world he lives In. A world plagued by a boom In the Industrial sector, growth which resulted In terrible child labor, prostitution and sickness, and many more atrocities. The words used In the second stanza make the poem seem Like an accusation, the words themselves are heavy as though they were Just as heavy as the goods of Iron ‘forged’. Blake highlights the words ‘forged, Iron, fiery, forge, furnace, sealed, hungry and gorge’ through the alliteration used In ‘fiery forge’ as well as the repetition on forge’.

Blake uses this poem, (Songs of Experience), to convey the truths of the social circumstances of his society during the Industrial revolution. He shows what humankind has become, Instead of being a species created In the Image of God; we had fallen to become some terrible Immoral creation. Collectively the poems bring about the Idea that man had fallen from grace after the Orlando sin, almost as though we went from being created In Image to Ulcer enamels, navels Taller Trot ‘s grace to level our shameful, sinful lives as nothing more than mortal beings with selfish thoughts and ulterior motives.