Romantics

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Introduction-Songs of Innocence

Synopsis

Narrator = Piper

Piper is piping and sees child on a cloud

Child tells him to pip about a lamb

He does and the child cries and asks him to sing

Piper sings and the child cries again and tells him to write a book before disappears

Piper uses a reed as a pen and writes happy songs for children

Tone

Establishes a visionary who is divinely inspired

Poetic voice is that of a child or accessible to children

Reflects process of poetic composition

Commentary

Pastoral Poem - Evokes idyllic world of innocence and simplicity before the fall of mankind (Adam/Eve)

Innocence = happiness and obedience. Piper is happy to do what is told

Language and tone

Valleys wild – This reference establishes the context as rural/rustic. This suggests the poem will be pastoral, evoking an idealised world of simplicity and innocence.

stain'd the water clear - Critics have argued over the implications of this:

Read at a literal level, it would merely refer to the colouring of the water to make ink

Some, however, have seen negative connotations in ‘stain'd'; the piper is destroying the clear purity of the water in making ink to write

They see this as the poet corrupting the purity of the poet's vision by the act of writing, i.e. that any attempt at poetic communication is a distortion of reality. The reader should therefore approach the poems with this awareness in mind.

The vocabulary is restricted and simple – ‘piping', ‘happy', ‘merry', ‘pleasant', ‘glee', ‘laughing', ‘joy'. This simplicity is heightened by repetition of a few words – ‘pipe', ‘piper', ‘piping', ‘cheer', ‘happy'. This all suggests an experience of simple, unalloyed happiness. Nothing negative is allowed to darken the atmosphere. It establishes the voice of the poem as that of a child

Structure

The metre is trochaic (stressed, unstressed) and ends with a stressed syllable. This gives it a positive-sounding tone

The pattern of repeated ‘So' and then ‘And' suggests the child-like simplicity of the piper:

The repetition of ‘So' suggests his obedience - he is asked to act, so he does so

The repetition of ‘and' in connecting sentences is characteristic of a young child's way of writing and emphasises the absence of any complexity

It enhances the impression that the voice of the poem as that of a child.