Biblical Metonymy in “Reeds of Innocence”
April 28, 2010
In William Blake’s “Reeds of Innocence”, the poet uses biblical imagery to tie together his use of literary elements and the message he conveys through his verse. Originally titled “Introduction” by Blake, the poem correctly sets the stage for a series of poems centered on religion and spirituality. Although it is not immediately apparent in the poem, underneath the child-like tone lies a deeper message. Blake directly makes parallels using biblical imagery, and through his own writing, propagates the message of the song and story of the Lamb by correlating the child as the Messianic Lamb figure.
Blake uses three images in “Reeds of Innocence” that the child conveys to the piper: an instrumental image, a vocal image, and a literary image. Blake utilizes all of these different biblical imagery elements to create a story that holds deeper meaning. At first glance, the poem seems light-hearted and simple based on the “pleasant glee” and laughter of the child, but after discovering the various biblical imageries, the poem starts to take on a whole different meaning.
First, the child tells the piper to “‘Pipe a song about a Lamb’”, then he tells the piper to sing that song, and then to write it down. In the first stanza, that child is seen “on a cloud”, an image that appears in the Bible multiple times, because people who come riding on a cloud are usually divine figures. In addition to this, the commanding voice of the child when he says, “‘drop thy pipe’” and “‘sit thee down and write’”, infers that he has authoritative power. When this same child “vanish’d from my sight”, right afterwards, the piper “wrote my happy songs / Every child may joy to hear”. This parallel reminds the reader of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, and the subsequent response of his apostles writing down the Good News in the form of the New Testament. When the Messiah gave the message that he no longer needed to be on Earth, it became the responsibility of the apostles to tell the story of the Lamb and also to write it down. This directly corresponds to the disappearance of the child, and the subsequent task of the piper to fulfill his own role as a narrator and a prophet by writing down the song of the Lamb. From this, one can conclude that the child is a Messianic figure, who is also the Lamb mentioned in stanza two.
This imagery of the child as the Messiah relates back to when Blake writes “So I piped: he wept to hear”; he even emphasizes this again in the third stanza saying, “while he wept with joy to hear”. This is important because the paradoxical comparison of the weeping and the joy signifies the irony of the child’s response. Clearly, this child is not an ordinary, innocent kid, because the depth of his emotions is surprising – this depth ties back in with the child’s representing Jesus in the given biblical imagery. The Messiah is joyful because he is coming to the people who need salvation, but also weeping because he will have to sacrifice his life.
Another significant piece of biblical imagery is the Lamb motif, because in the Old Testament, a lamb was a reference to a sacrificial animal cleansing and taking away sin. In John 1:29, John the Baptist says “‘Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” That Lamb that gets sacrificed in the Old Testament is a picture of a Messianic figure, namely Jesus who ultimately gets sacrificed for humanity’s sin in the New Testament. Thus, when the child is telling the piper to “ ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’”, he is referring to himself, specifying for the piper to make music of the Good News, and then to sing of it, and then to write it down. This is directed to the apostles and New Testament writers who received the story of the Lamb, and were asked to pluck a hollow reed and to write down with their “pen[s]” the “happy songs” or the gospel story.
In the very last stanza, Blake writes “And I made a rural pen, / And I stain’d the water clear,” which initially seems contradictory. How can the stain of a pen make water clear? One would think that ink would discolor the water, but the stain is talking about the blood of Jesus in the song of the Lamb, or the gospel story. The blood of the Lamb that washes away the sins of the world is like the stain of the pen that turns the water clear. The clear water shows that man’s sins are purified and forgiven. The irony is that in ancient times blood was considered an excreta and a pollutant, however the Bible uses this so-called pollutant to cleanse and purify; this is like what the stain is doing to the water.
The poem in and of itself is actively conveying its point, not only because of the metonymy and correlation of the biblical imagery, but also because Blake is doing exactly what he is saying in his poem. He is using his “happy songs” to convey the song of the Lamb and the message of Christ. He is writing them down so that “every child may joy to hear” the Good News.
