Season Songs (William Blake)l

[Angel]

Season Songs
William Blake

To Spring

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Thro' the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell each other, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth,
And let thy holy feet visit our clime.

Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languished head,
Whose modest tresses were bound up for thee.




To Summer

O thou who passest thro' our valleys in
Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat
That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer,
Oft pitched'st here thy golden tent, and oft
Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld
With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

Beneath our thickest shades we oft have heard
Thy voice, when noon upon his fervid car
Rode o'er the deep of heaven; beside our springs
Sit down, and in our mossy valleys, on

Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy
Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream:
Our valleys love the Summer in his pride.

Our bards are fam'd who strike the silver wire:
Our youth are bolder than the southern swains:
Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance:
We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy,
Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven,
Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat.




To Autumn

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stainèd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

`The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

`The spirits of the air live on the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.'
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.





To Winter

`O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.'

He hears me not, but o'er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain'd, sheathèd
In ribbèd steel; I dare not lift mine eyes,
For he hath rear'd his sceptre o'er the world.

Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and in his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.

He takes his seat upon the cliffs,--the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch, that deal'st
With storms!--till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driv'n yelling to his caves beneath mount Hecla.

source:about.com

[Angel]

Summary of The Season Songs (To Spring; To Summer; To Autumn; To Winter)


Blake begins the seasonal cycle poems in spring, personified as an angelic male figure with “dewy locks,” “angel eyes,” “holy feet,” and “perfumed garments.” The earth is represented as a female, maturing to an age of sexual willingness. The speaker is asking for the male angel spring to come down to earth and prepare to sow the seed of a new cycle. Again, morning represents the new day of light (experience) and the speaker is inviting his spring angel to “scatter thy pearls / upon our lovesick land” hoping to inspire a new commitment to emotion across England (“our western isle”) rather than everything being done for reason or sense. He speaker asserts that spring is dawn, the new beginning, and during this season, there is an overall hope that primal unity and innocence will withhold the tyrannical influence of experience. The mood of this poem is hope (lines 6-7). After winter’s tough temperament of scorn, spring is a season that offers the land a fresh new rising to do away with what has been learned and experience nature with fresh, innocent eyes.

Next comes summer, which can be equated to Blake’s mythological creature Orc—the embodiment to passion and energy, and the opposition to Urizen, who is represented in winter. If spring was the beckoning of the angel to spread thy seed of innocence, summer is the time when the seed is devoured and offspring will be produced, in other words, it is the immediate state following spring where the marriage is consummated with fertilization (lines 9-13). It is a blissful state, the speaker begins by setting a plea that summer abate the fierce heat of the innocence and the spiritual world and allow the natural earth to yield to its desires. The fire of the sun is a metaphor for passion, the speaker recognizing the “fierce stead” of the “the heat [and] flames” and the “joy” the natural world experiences in its glow. Everything appears more beautiful (lines 15-17) in this ‘naked/natural ’ state (“silk draperies off”) and nothing is “lacking” in the “dance” and “sultry heat” of this euphoric season.

Enter autumn. This is spring’s antithesis, the arrival of the killjoy or prophet of doom. In typical Blake dialectic style, autumn is the offspring of the inebriated summer. Thrust into a world that is darkening, there is a primal separation that leads to the opposite of summer’s joy. The newborn autumn is “stain’d with the blood of the grape” (a reference to wine) and seeks “rest.” Notice the beginning of the second stanza to the middle of the third is autumn speaking, describing the orgasmic rapture of summer’s consummation (a female opening her beautiful bud, love rushing through thrilling veins, flourished bright cheeks, breaking into song, her head is in the clouds, fruit is bore among joy and pinions light). Overall, the temperament of autumn’s description of summer’s love is lustily virile. Sadly, as the poem ends, the offspring—autumn—must leave her mother and “flea” into the “bleak hills” alone to survive in the forthcoming brutality of winter.

Lastly is winter, the end result of all this lust and abandonment. Winter is clearly Blake’s Urizen—the embodiment of convention and law, maturity and experience, and the antithesis to summer (Orc). Despite the speaker’s pleas in the opening stanza, winter, the father/priest/King/tyrant “direful monster” “hears [him] not.” Notice the scepter he carries as a symbol of his rule. In this season all the passion of the sun is gone and the tyrant king “freezes up frail life.” Finally, notice how the oppressive ruler rapes the land unlike (stanza three) the joyful union in summer. This time, the consummation of female nature is expressed with brutality and frustration rather than ecstasy. In the end, winter sits in Mount Hecla (in Iceland), ignoring the “mariner’s vein cries” for help. The poet is aware that while unable to navigate a frozen and dead world, there will be no relief until the monster is defeated.

Analysis

The Season Songs (“To Spring,” “To Summer,” “To Autumn,” and “To Winter") are grouped together for obvious reasons. While they do stand alone as four separate poems, Blake intended the four poems to be interconnecting. Without question, it is the theme of the cycle that needs to be taken away from these. Yet the specific cycle to which Blake is referring is debatable amongst Blake scholars. In the synopsis above, I have presented one commonly accepted interpretation as an example to the way the poems can be discussed in relation to one another.
There are two other articles to note: One is the allusion to the James Thomas 1726 quaternary (meaning, a collection of four poems together) “The Seasons.” Because of this, some argue the subject of these poems is poetry itself, and the cycling of allusion and metaphor, because of the numerous references to literary objects.
In general, the Season Songs can be interpreted as a reference not to nature and the arts, but to sexual desire and fulfillment, and to the different stages of human life and civilization (though of course that is only one possible interpretation of many). Some believe the poems to be representative of religion and nature, others as the history of poetry from the east to the west. As long as the theory of oppositions and cycles is applied, almost any analysis can be offered.

source: gradesaver.com

[Angel]

Quotes and Analysis

1.

"let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our lovesick land that mourns for thee."

From "To Spring"; lines 10-12

This is the summoning of the maiden spring by the speaker to bring new life into the world. Here, the morn represents a new life for earth and nature. The world has just survived a brutal and vicious winter and is impatiently awaiting spring to share her seeds (pearls) across the land so that new life can be planted and nurtured to growth.


2.

"We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy,
Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven,
Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat."

"To Summer"; lines 17-19

Summer is the season of celebration. The speaker is rejoicing in rapture at the high noon of the season and notes that noting of ecstasy is vacant or absent. Even the fierce "heat" that is referred to earlier in the poem is of no bother. This is a much different attitude the speaker now has compared to line 7 of the same poem (where protection from the summer sun was sought "beneath our thickest shades."


3.

"Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load."

"To Autumn"; lines 17-18

Autumn is fallen from grace and all innocence is lost. The hills of the earth have become "bleak" and Autumn is aware (experienced) of the inevitable approach of winter. In preparation for the death/frozen world, Autumn "fleas" from the earth, but leaves the fruit born during his harvest behind.


4.

"He hears me not, but o'er the yawning deep
Rides heavy;"

"To Winter"; lines 5-6

The speaker here is wretched mariner, lost at sea and pleading for salvation from Winter, the "direful monster" responsible for his peril. No matter how hard he wails and begs, the tyrant and oppressive father (Winter) continues to ignore him and show no mercy. The mariner is a symbol for all humankind at the end of the cycle, gained with experience. The "yawning" is a reference to the dangers of a languished being.


source:gradesaver.com