"The Clod & the Pebble"

“The Clod & the Pebble” in a way embodies the essence of Songs of Innocence and Experience by representing two opposing sides of love. The poem begins with a stanza detailing love that “seeketh not Itself to please” and continues this representation of love as selfless until the seventh line—exactly halfway through—when the word “But” signals a turn in the poem (1, 7). The second half of the second stanza then serves to introduce the final stanza, which illustrates a love that “seeketh only Self to please”—and thus the last stanza becomes the opposite of the first (9). The idealistic view of love in the first stanza aligns more with the ideas in the Songs of Innocence while the final stanza is certainly one of experience. It is interesting, then, that “The Clod & the Pebble” is among the Songs of Experience, especially since the poem itself is so symmetrical; while it does end on the more cynical view, it also gives both sides equal weight.

While the experience of the second half of the poem would not fit in with the innocence of the earlier poems, the mirroring of the first and final stanzas puts the innocent and experienced views on equal footing, in a way. The rhymes “please” and “ease” appear in both the first and last stanzas, and in both stanzas the second and fourth lines also rhyme (1, 3 & 9, 11). Though they do not rhyme with each other, there is even a mirroring in the final words of each stanza—“despair” and “despite” (12) The idea that both understandings of love deserve equal time in the poem is perhaps less pessimistic than some of the other songs of experience. The love still “Joys” in the final stanza—it is just at the cost of someone else’s “ease” (11). Thus experience in this poem reveals that it is not that there is no joy, only that it comes at the expense of something else. A certain interdependence between the two types of love is evident in this mirroring—the love “gives its ease” in the first stanza, and another “joys” at that same loss (11). In a sense, this feels natural—one party gives love, the other is rewarded. It appears as though both need to exist to complete this transfer.

The clod appears naïve and innocent—it has such a hopeful view of love in spite of living in “despair” and being “Trodden with the cattle’s feet” (4, 6). Ending on the pebble’s view perhaps reveals the clod’s song as ridiculous. However, I’m not sure if there is a clear reason for the pebble to be so cynical about love, either—the image of water in the brook is certainly more peaceful than mud. In a sense this makes the pebble seem somewhat ridiculous as well—despite the water it lives in it is hardened in a way the clay is not. While the clod “sang,” the pebble “warbled” and there is melody and song in both these words (5, 8). Both the Songs of Innocence and those of experience are songs, poems. While the song is associated with the innocence of the clod in this poem, the same form is used to represent the cynicism of the pebble. In a sense, “The Clod & the Pebble” represents a kind of paradox in the opposition of innocence and experience. Experience, like the poem, includes innocence—it represents an understanding of innocence as well as its absence—while innocence cannot include experience by virtue of it being innocence. In this sense, they almost cannot be opposites, but they are. 

 

 Also, this is cool: http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copy.xq?copyid=songsie.b