The Schoolboy By William Blake Is About Freedom (Explain)

Is The Schoolboy by William Blake about freedom?

The general answer is yes. Why? The poet is classified as Romantic and the works of the romantic poets are nature inclined not excluding The Schoolboy by William Blake where birds, trees, winter, summer are glorified.

In the poem, Blake used the plight of the schoolboy as a medium to opine that freedom is embedded in nature and natural things. He pointed at the awesomeness in the company shared outside classroom "O what sweet company!"

William Blake through this poem also proves that nature equates freedom that was why the complaints of the schoolboy centered on how his parents took away his youthful freedom by forcing him into boring classroom learning. In line 16-17 "How can a bird born of joy/ Sit in a cage and sing" was part of the metaphors used by the poem speaker to reveal that classroom learning is imprisonment.

The schoolboy picked his learning freely and willingly from nature as a result of the delights he derived from such things as beautiful trees, singing skylarks, summer morning, etc. Contrary to formal education; the prove of the schoolboy's freedom and willingness to learn from nature is contained in stanza one of the poem:
"I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman wind his horn,
And the skylark sings with me:
O what sweet company!"

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