Poetry Analysis: "Auguries of Innocence"

Poetry Analysis: “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake



Auguries of Innocence the conflicted situations without warnings and omens of judgment, William Blake talks of the innocent and the underprivileged against the elite and blessed. The length and the jagged rhyme scheme is Blake’s way of mimicking life’s daily bumps and challenges that we go through.

In the last two verses of the poem it is speaking about no matter who you are, you will go to Heaven. Living in the darkness, the endless nights and are not among the blessed and elite will find God in his promised brilliance the elite and blessed will too go to Heaven; however, it will be as an abstraction of them. Be the protector of the weak and the reward will be eternity in Heaven. As in lines three and four “Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an hour.”

The first four lines of the poem: The “world in a grain of sand” represents intellect and “the wild flower signifies love, in which Heaven is shown through love. This is within the imagination, and bridges a connection between the two; seeing the world in different way without judgment and omens. The line from Blake’s The Marriage from Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern,” brings the same sense to the poem in which the world is capable of being infinite.

We could argue that the world can regenerate in time and that nature can be an augury to the lost vision of innocence. In which, “man” is still unfallen, still possesses his morals, as not morally fallen yet. Once someone has lost their morals, they have lost their innocence in which puts all of Heaven in a rage, as in line five and six “A robin red breast in a cage/puts all Heaven in a rage.”

In the lines “The questioner who sits so sly/shall never know how to reply/he who replies to words of doubt/doth put the light of knowledge out/the strongest poison ever known…” Blake is saying that we find the truth within nature and the other two seasons are adolescence and adulthood.

Blake’s perception of life is to recognize how fragile life is, be a protector for those who cannot protect themselves, and do not become an “unfallen citizen”. Life is full of many bumps and challenges and is those things that teach us to what is morally right.