THE PIPER AND THE CHILD
Introduction to 'Songs of Innocence'
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:--
"Pipe a song about a lamb."
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again:"
So I piped; he wept to hear.
"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer:"
So I sang the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
"Piper, sit thee down and write,
In a book that all may read."
So he vanished from my sight;
And I plucked a hollow reed;
And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
HOLY THURSDAY
From 'Songs of Innocence'
'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
Came children walking two and two, in red and blue and green:
Gray-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow.
Oh, what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among:
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor.
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
A CRADLE SONG
From 'Songs of Experience'
Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming in the joys of night;
Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.
Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.
As thy softest limbs I feel,
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek and o'er thy breast,
Where thy little heart doth rest.
Oh, the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep!
When thy little heart shall wake,
Then the dreadful light shall break.
THE LITTLE BLACK BOY
From 'Songs of Innocence'
My Mother bore me in the Southern wild,
And I am black, but oh, my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved 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 receive
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
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
"For when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear his voice,
Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.'"
Thus did my mother say, and kissèd me,
And thus I say to little English boy:
When I from black, and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,
I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.