The Little Black Boy

By: William Blake

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.



Analysis

The rhyme of this poem is ABAB, a pleasure for our ears, but not its message, a song of a black boy with a white soul, the contrast, to make this poem unforgettable.

The black boy wants to be free, but only through his soul.

His soul cannot be imprisoned by any kind of chains, it will be always free and immortal, like this poem written by William Blake, an English poet, published in 1789.

The salvation can only happen with the Christianity, to get out from the fence of bestiality, and by the black freewill, that has uprooted the seed of hatred,  for the white supremacy.

The black supremacy is based on love, rather than on power, for not having forgotten  the teachings of God.

Through the voice of William Blake a white poet the supremacies have been contaminated forever, this is what I learnt reading this poem.

This poem is unforgettable, being dense of symbolism and imagery, that will please the pleasure of reading and the listening.