THE LITTLE BLACK BOY

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 bereaved 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 sunburnt face
   Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

'For, when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
   The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, "Come out from the grove, my love and 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,

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear

To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;

And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

And be like him, and he will then love me.

William Blake poem “The Little Black Boy” tells a story of a black child from Africa learning about God through his Mother’s teachings. Her teachings tell the readers to live in comfort and joy, we should learn to accept God’s love. The story then moves on to the black boy passing his lessons to the English boy. The little black boy then made a promise to the English boy when they are in Heaven, he will teach him about God’s love.

In this poem, Blake deals with the suffering of the blacks and how white people discriminated them in the past because of their skin color. Blake also compares light to dark by using the two boys. Line 2 and line 3 is the comparison between the two boys and who they are. The black boy has no self understanding because he thinks every white boy is an angel because of their skin color (white) which is usually used to compare light, but as for the black boy, his skin is dark which makes him not as equal to the white boy. Therefore, the blacks are tend to be look down upon at because in many culture, black represents evil, and white represents good.

His mother represents love. She is concerned with her son about his self-esteem and persuades him to understand himself and commit to God’s love because God’s love is never ending just like her. Line 9 and 10 shows how God’s love is for everyone and how even though the black people are discriminated by white people, they receive God’s love like the rest. Also, in stanza 4, this shows black being closer to God because they are suffering. Stanza 4 connects with line 25 because the black boy "shades" the white boy with his body. This means that the English were distanced from God because of the way they treat black people. In conclusion, Blake wants the reader to know that we are all the same by having the story of the black boy being spread out just like Blake’s opinion.