Commentary on A Divine Image Essay

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. William Blake was just an unrecognized during his lifetime, Blakes works are now considered seminal and influential in the history of both poetry and arts he created many illuminated works which combined the two. Blakes creativity engendered a diverse and symbolically rich quantity, which embraced imagination as as the body of God or of human existence itself.

In one of many poems which William Blake had written A Divine Image, the forms of Blakes powerful fashion in their own right are even more so as in the The Divine Image. In analyzing the text the poem contains 2 stanzas fairly a short poem, it does not flow a specific rhythm although its iambic rhythm gives the poem a natural flow and a sense of easy flow, mostly found in songs and hymns. Blake uses several techniques and literary devices, to transmit his thought and ideas of the main features in this poem, the poem has the rhythm affect which the whole mood, tone and meaning. The poet chose to give the poem specific sounds that shapes the pace and structure of the rhythm.

Its simple vocabulary and short lines, as well as the lilting rhythm give out a hymn like quality, which resonates the spiritual content of the piece. The first line cruelty has a human heart is clarifying sin contains in us and surrounds us and no one is perfect. The second line and jealousy a human face it tells us that in simple meaning that human hides its nature of sympathy, compassion and love and blinded by jealousy expressing more of a melancholic feeling. The first stanza helps us to understand the relationship of the four aspects of human nature presented, cruelty, jealousy, terror and secrecy. The first and third lines start with the main word, while in the second and fourth line is approached by the word And. Noticing that the stress of the lines in this first stanza falls into the main word, giving an emphasizing effect. This word is strengthen by the repetition of the word human and the repetition of the y ending sounds in lines one, two and four.

The structure of the second stanzas differs form the structure of the first. Whats noticeable about the poems is that each of the lines provides an answer in a symmetrical way to each one in the first stanza. In deeper level, the way Blake structured the poem can represent the inflexibility and stiffness of these negative aspects, like immovable objects buried deep inside human nature. This rhythmical feature of this stanza is foregrounding. In fact, every line of the poem has the word human. The repetitiveness, together with the characteristic described. Leads the reader to render them exclusively human, the result of our intellectual superiority over nature. The stress of every line falls in the word human in every case in the second stanza, achieved by a foregrounding device.

The repetition of the consonant sounds plays a crucial part of the rhythm in the second stanza. The most used constant sound, frequently repeated is the sound f for example in f is forged iron, F orm a fiery forge, or a f ace a furnace sealed. The repetitive of the f sounds together with the image of a furnace an iron being forged and suggests a very strong image of fire that affects the tone and the mood of the poem. The climax of this image was achieved in the third line of the second stanza the human face a furnace sealed the image of the furnace is presented. There is juxtaposition of the word face and furnace these dot usually go together, for the heat of the furnace would burn someones face. Referring to last line on the first stanza it corresponds, a chaotic human referring to jealousy. Blake uses this imagery to explain that jealousy does nothing more than harms the person that feels it, as if he was putting his face into a furnace. Line two and line four of the second stanza it has the perfect rhyme out of all lines in the poem, this is because the ideas in the second stanza are developed in a patter, from small to large such as iron, forge, furnace and gauge, the reader can pair up again these feelings and can imagine which one is a consequence of the other. Blake states that the consequence of cruelty is terror and secrecy is the result of jealousy. The poems rhythm and absence of rhyme can be seen as a preface to the last line. The image of fire suggested by the rhythmical repetition of the f sounds remains while the image of the gorge is presented. Together with the orge sound in this last word and the word forge, an image of an enclosed and trapped fire burning as hot as the one in a furnace is created. The human heart becomes a scorching gorge, like burning flesh, and its a powerful way of finishing the poem after the repetitiveness of the previous lines.

In conclusion, the rhyme produced by the stress given to the words at regular intervals, the selection of these words according to their sounds consequent effects and the absence of rhyme until the last line of the poem where a sudden and impressive ending is pictured are fundamental nature of the poem, which does not transmit the poets understanding with the reader clearly and accurately to the reader. William Blake uses such complex meanings which lay his undiscovered ability in expressing life with his poems.