Analyze The Use Of Language In The Schoolboy By William Blake

Okay folks, let's analyze The Schoolboy by William Blake from the angle of diction. William Blake, 1757 to 1827 is a very famous non-african English poet of the romantic era. The poem titled "The Schoolboy" holds its popularity and high level of likeness to how the poet decently challenged the trending classroom education; surely William Blake is a genius.

"Early to bed is early to rise" but such idiomatic expression has nothing to do with the schoolboy during the summer morn: "I love to rise in a summer morn/ When the birds sing on every tree" (line 1-2). Such period is most delightful to the boy since the simple, sweet and spontaneous education he derives is far higher than that of the classroom learning.

Looking at the six stanzas of the poem, it is obvious that the poet paid attention to the rhythm and the rhymes without allowing poetic license steal the simplicity of the poem. What more can be said of the language? There is no obsolete word, no Shakespearean English, no huge vocabulary that will prompt opening the dictionary. Unhappiness of the schoolboy coupled with rhetorical questions in the poem gave it a sad tone;
"But to go to school in a summer morn,_
O it drives all joy away!
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay" (quoting stanza two of the poem)

Other poetic languages of not are rhetorical questions, symbolism, repetition, alliteration, etc.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)