Small Girl Lost Essay, Research Paper

“ A Little GIRL Lost ” from Songs of Experience is one of Blake? s most of import verse forms. Though judging the aesthetic value of a verse form is about impossible, I would postulate that “ A Little Girl Lost ” is “ better ” than “ The Little Girl Lost ” found in Songs of Innocence. Possibly because “ A Little Girl Lost ” was composed as an reconsideration to its original opposite number, holding been first written in “ Innocence, ” it acts as a decision to the original verse form. The two verse forms both observe a immature miss as she encounters a universe filled with artlessness ( in “ The Little Girl Lost ” ) and a universe of experience ( “ A Little Girl Lost ” ) . In first verse form, a immature seven-year-old miss named Lyca falls asleep in the wilderness under a tree. While her parents worry about her, she sleeps innocently in the forests with a king of beasts tittuping around her while she sleeps. The poetic vision seems to be a portraiture of immature love & # 8211 ; of artlessness unprotected in the passion-haunted wood. In the 2nd verse form, found in “ Experience, ” the feeling displacements from artlessness to propose a insurgent class of love geographic expedition. The immature miss, Ona, discovers passion merely to happen that her male parent has a negative position on the really love she has merely been introduced to. “ A Little Girl Lost ” seems to be much deeper in idea than “ The Little Girl Lost. ” This deepness in content Begins with the rubric, which gives the verse form an aura of edginess. A feeling that it is unsafe or iniquitous roots from word “ Small ” in the rubric, which implies that the miss addressed in the verse form is rather immature. Other marks such as the fact that the prologue is addressed to “ kids ” and that the “ inaugural ” is still clearly under parental care create contradicting feelings about artlessness. All this could be somewhat misdirecting. Possibly Blake, like Shakespeare, believed in really immature brides. While the male child and the miss in the “ Nurse? s Song ” and the small lost male childs, both in “ Innocence ” and “ Experience, ” are clearly kids, the illustration shows Lyca ( The Little Girl Lost ) and her lover as to the full mature. The “ young person and maiden ” in “ A Little Girl Lost ” are non really shown in the illustration, but the verse form itself suggests that they are more than kids. The first thing to detect about “ A Little Girl Lost ” is that notwithstanding the beautiful lyrical temper of the first portion, it is a calamity. It is closely related with “ A Little Boy Lost, ” because the two verse forms both contain subjects focus oning on the devastation of vernal artlessness. Blake is noticing on the unfortunate world where young person is non tolerated, with the effect that the psyche of young person is consistently excluded, and artlessness destroyed. “ A Little Girl Lost ” merely substitutes “ Love ” where “ Thought ” was the guiltless action destroyed in “ A Little Boy Lost. ” The verse form is intensely drama

tic in form and character. Unlike “The Little Girl Lost”, which employs a repeated trochaic trimater prosody throughout all 10 stanzas, “A Little Girl Lost” adds variation to the rhythm and meter. The number of stanzas is limited to a prologue and six five-line verses. The rhyming pattern helps create rhythm in the poem, following a model of AA, BBB/ CC, DDD /EE, FFF, etc. This allows each stanza its own little narrative and separates them, in turn preparing the reader for a slightly different theme with each new verse. First the prologue or Chorus tells the reader the meaning of the poem. Then the curtain lifts on a scene of pastoral beauty, transporting us to an ancient world that is no more. In the nest scene the story begins. It is a story of this “Age of Gold,” continuing through three scenes representative of dawn, day, and night. There the first ?act? ends. The second act shows us the destruction of innocence. Ona, the fair maiden, if shattered to find that her discovery of love is nothing but a terrible desecration of white and sacred memories for her old father. Upon this scene, where love becomes taboo, an image of the Garden of Eden and the Fall becomes evident. The Fall is due to the entrance of “the Law” (of God), much like the parental laws Ona is restricted by under her father. The Garden of Eden abolishes all innocence and creates a world of loneliness for its inhabitants. Much like Lyca sleeps alone in “The Little Girl Lost,” Ona is left alone at the end. Her name could be an anglicized version of Una; she is “one” girl in a world of utter loneliness. The illustration plate corresponds to this feeling because the actors in the poem do not appear in the picture. We see nothing but the tree and the grass and the birds: all natural and symbolical, but a concealment rather than a picture of the poem. The reader is not invited to pry upon the sacred moment of love: “Strangers come not near:/ And the maiden soon forgot her fear.” The two illustrations from “Innocence” and “Experience” are quite mismatched. The scene with the “youth” and “maiden” from the “Innocence” illustration would much better capture the essence of “A Little Girl Lost,” whereas the natural scene of serenity would be better emphasized by the dreamy scene of the natural world in “Experience.” Either Blake mixed up the plates, (which is very doubtful) or he wanted to demonstrate the feeling of uneasiness previously discussed. The sentiments for these poems are rather somber, even the poems about innocence because from the “Experience” poems we learn that innocence is almost always lost. “A Little Girl Lost” is a step above its predecessor because it flows better and simply tells a more complicated and beautiful story. The intensity is heightened by the careless joy suddenly cut short by dismal reality. It is this intensity and emotional demonstration of love and loss that sets this poem apart from Blake?s others.