A Reading of Blakes A Cradle Song Essay -- William Blake S. Foster Da

A rock n roll musician SongS. Foster Damons 1947 knowledge of A rocker Song indicates that most early dilettantes accepted Isaac Watts tranquillize my dear, lie still and slumber as the model for Blakes metrical composition. However, Damon claims that There is no more resemblance amongst the two worksthan there must be between any two cradle-songs. He also claims that the designs of the second plate befool a Raphaelesque hardness, which is in this day not pleasant.Vivian de Sola Pinto acknowledges the connections between A Cradle Song and Watts work made by Damon and others but notes that no critic has yet explored the relationship between Blakes and Watts work in detail, a working class she takes on in her 1957 study. Placing Watts A Cradle Hymn side-by-side with Blakes A Cradle Song, de Sola Pinto analyzes their thematic and prosodic similarities and differences, ultimately reading Blakes song as the delogicalization of Watts hymn.In his 1959 reading of A Cradle Song, Rob ert F. Gleckner asserts that it is an expression of Blakes concept of moving into the res publica of higher sinlessness citing as evidence that after 1815, Blake always followed A Cradle Song with The Divine Image in the sequence of Songs of Innocence. Gleckner discusses the act from pleasant dreams and sweet smiles to moans and weeping as the movement from innocence into be intimate and ultimate innocence, the hope of mankind which is the ultimate negation of self. Gleckner claims that this song is actually a prayer, the same prayer mentioned in The Divine Image. Hazard Adams 1963 reading asserts that the poem is both a song and a prayer for the continued innocence of the child. Adams classifies the poem as one of Blakes lullabies which Adams claims ... ...iam Blake. Cambridge UP, 1973.Gleckner, Robert F. The Piper and the Bard A read of William Blake. Detroit Wayne State UP, 1959.Glen, Heather. Vision and Disenchantment Blakes Songs and Wordsworths Lyrical Ballads. Cambridge UP, 1983.Hirsch, E.D. Innocence and Experience An understructure to William Blake. Chicago UP, 1964.Holloway, John. Blake The Lyric Poet. London Edward Arnold, Ltd., 1968.Keynes, Geoffrey. Commentary. Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two opposite word States of the Human Soul. By William Blake. 1789,1794. New York Orion, 1967.Leader, Zachary. Reading Blakes Songs. London Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.Lindsay, David W. Blake Songs of Innocence and Experience. Atlantic Highlands, NJ Humanities Press, Int., 1989.Ostriker, Alicia. Vision and Verse in William Blake. Madison U Wisconsin P, 1965.