Analyzing Blake's Nurse's Song: Jealousy and Control

Nurse's Song (E): A Critical Analysis

Blake viewed the natural child as an embodiment of the creative imagination, the spiritual core of human beings. He was concerned about how social institutions, such as the school system and parental authority, stifle the capacity for imaginative vision. The child's capacity for joy and play are expressions of this imagination.

The apparent joy and innocence of the first three lines are undermined by the reversal of expectation in the fourth. It becomes clear that these are the reflections of a ‘sick' mind rather than a benevolent one. This pattern is repeated in the second stanza, where the first two lines (featured in Nurse's Song (I)) are exposed by the second two.

In the same way, what is presented as the nurse's love and care for the children – calling them home to rest and away from the dangers of getting chilled by the dew – is revealed as jealousy and cruelty. The nurse loves only herself. Because her youthful pleasures are past, she wishes to deny the children theirs. She binds them to herself in possessiveness. Further, she wishes on them the same dried-up old age as her own, where emotions like jealousy must be made to appear as good. She wants the children to perpetuate her life-denying behavior and response.

Unlike the companion poem in the Songs of Innocence, this poem takes place entirely in the nurse's mind. The response isn't to an actual event but is a continual reaction – ‘when[ever]' she hears children ‘then' her response is to call them home. This suggests the Nurse's self-created isolation. She does not respond to real children but to what they evoke in her own mind.

Language and Tone

Note the contrast between the two meanings of ‘green' in the first stanza:

• In line 1, it denotes the freshness and fertility of the land and the children. It represents freedom and growth.
• In line 4, it refers to jealousy, which leads to stagnation and constraint.

This also makes the use of ‘fresh' in line 3 ambiguous and ironic. The memories come ‘fresh' insofar as they come repeatedly, but these are not fresh and full of life. They are often-visited and devoid of life.

‘Whisp'rings' is also an evocative term:

• Are these the whisperings of children full of fun, who like to do things in secret? That might create the Nurse's jealousy because they have a life apart from hers.
• Or are the whisperings those of older children engaged in illicit activities?
• Or even those of people who would do them harm?

The literal and moral ‘high ground' of Nurse's Song (I) (where ‘laughing is heard on the hill') is exchanged for shady goings on in the dale/valley. Certainly ‘the dale' suggests a place at a greater distance from the Nurse, too far away for immediate oversight, or to exert control.

Structure and Meter

The anapaestic metre of lines 1, 5, and 8 produces a jauntiness that is undercut by the content and tone of the poem, particularly by the heavy iambs of line 4. The full weight of the nurse's denial of life is underlined by the internal rhyme in the third line of stanza two, which contrasts the two sentiments. The overall effect is to give the statement the weight of an undeniable maxim, which the repeated ‘and's reinforce.