“The Little Black Boy” Introduction

• "The Little Black Boy" is a poem by British poet William Blake, included in his 1789 publication Songs of Innocence. The poem argues for racial equality, insisting that earthly identity is temporary and that all are worthy of God's divine love. This is told through the voice of a "little black boy," who in turn is recounting the lessons taught to him by his mother in "the southern wild" (that is, in Africa). Blake is generally known as a radical, forward-thinking artist—to the extent that he was largely ignored in his own lifetime—and the poem aims for an empowering message. That said, it also reinforces many negative and outright racist stereotypes about Black people that were prevalent in the 18th century and, indeed, remain so today.

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“The Little Black Boy” Summary

• My mother gave birth to me in Africa. I am Black, but I feel passionately that I have a white soul. The English boy is white like an angel, but, being Black, I look like I lack divine light.

  I remember a lesson my mother taught me. One morning, before the day got too hot, she sat me down on her lap underneath a tree and kissed me. She pointed towards the sun and began to speak.

  She told me to look at the sun as it rose, and said that's where God lives. God offers us light and warmth. All the living beings of the world receive comfort and joy from his energy.

  My mother continued: God put us here on earth—in a small space—so that we could learn to accept and appreciate the rays of his love. Our Black bodies and faces are just a cloud, or the shade from trees.

  Once our souls have learned to take the heat, God will announce that there is no longer any need for our earthly bodies. He will beckon us out from the shade and invite us to frolic around his tent like joyful lambs.

  That's what my loving mother told me, and I'm passing on this lesson to the English boy. When he and I are freed from our earthly identities—me from blackness and him from whiteness—we'll gather around God's tent and play in joy and freedom (like lambs).

  I'll offer him shade from the rays of God's love until he can tolerate the heat, and we'll lean upon God's knee. Then I'll stand up and stroke his white hair, and, being like the English boy, he'll love me.

“The Little Black Boy” Themes

• 

  Racial Equality and Divine Love

  “The Little Black Boy” is an 18th-century poem in which a Black child attempts to figure out his place in this world and the next (that is, in the spiritual afterlife). The poem says that race will cease to matter when the speaker is united with God in the afterlife. The poem thus argues that divine love transcends race, and that all races are equal in the eyes of God.

  The speaker starts by talking about his upbringing “in the southern wild,” an allusion to Africa. The boy himself states that though he “bereav’d of light” his “soul is white.” Blake here is playing into the idea of white and black as symbolic concepts, with whiteness/light (that is, an absence of darkness) being associated with goodness, purity, and love. The speaker here is stating a claim to these positive attributes, and the poem is insisting that he, too, is worthy of God's love.

  The speaker then recounts how his mother taught him to associate God with the sun, and that the purpose of earthly life is to “learn to bear the beams of love.” In other words, the sun’s rays are the rays of God’s love, and the speaker “bear[s]” more of these beams than the white "little English boy." The speaker's “sun-burnt” skin thus becomes a mark of his closeness to God rather than a source of shame. (In reality, of course, having dark skin has nothing to do with being "sun-burnt"; Blake is trying to make a point with his imagery here, rather than a scientific argument about skin color.)

  The mother’s story concludes with the idea that identity is only temporary—blackness or whiteness are just “cloud[s]” that people wear during earthly life. Racial differences disappear in heaven, where the two boys will finally become free and equal, and “like lambs rejoice.” The speaker restates this idea and suggests that in heaven he will provide shade to the “little English boy.”

  Blake intends this as a vision of equality and joyful communion, but note that this is at odds with the way in which the speaker, even in heaven, “shade[s]” the white boy. In a sense, the poem argues that the speaker—through his experience of God’s “beams of love”—is better prepared (perhaps due to his experience of suffering in life) for a spiritual relationship with God, and thus must help the white boy when they both meet in the full brightness of God’s love. At the same time, this image makes the speaker deferential to the white boy even in death.

  And, of course, readers never learn of the English boy's response. In the end, the speaker might be taken as presenting an innocent but ultimately naive perspective. As a child, the boy perhaps hasn’t yet fully encountered the brutality of society’s racist evils, and so can still buy into hopeful but unrealistic visions of the future.

  Finally, it's important for the reader to understand that, even as the poem ostensibly seeks compassion and equality, the poem itself embodies many of the racist attitudes common in the 18th century (and, of course, afterwards)—with treating Africa as a "wild" or, uncivilized, place being just one example. The speaker also seeks the approval of the English boy and remains subservient to him even in the afterlife—meaning that race in fact does not float away after death, and that the speaker remains subject to the prejudices he faced on earth even in heaven.

  It's possible Blake was aware of this, and, again, was purposefully seeking to make an ironic commentary on the young speaker's naivety. Elsewhere in Blake's work, he does indeed condemn the promise of an idyllic afterlife as a means to excuse earthly mistreatment. Then again, the poem might simply be unaware of its own racism.

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• 

  Life, Love, and the Afterlife

  The poem presents a vision of the Christian afterlife, and argues that people’s identities on Earth are only temporary. Here, as in other Blake poems, an idealized vision of the afterlife explains and informs the meaning of earthly existence—that to be alive is, in effect, to be passing through the earthly world, and that before too long people will be reunited with a fundamentally loving and kind God.

  The young speaker puts forward the view, which he has learned from his mother, that life on earth is short and fleeting—and perhaps even not all that important within the overall context of people’s “souls.” Though the poem doesn’t directly address earthly suffering, this perspective suggests that suffering is something temporary—and that sufferers can look forward to eternal joy in the afterlife.

  Later, the speaker restates what his mother taught him about why human beings are given earthly lives: “we are put on earth a little space, / That we may learn to bear the beams of love.” Earthly life, then, has a purpose that isn’t necessarily immediately obvious: to prepare for the afterlife. Indeed, this preparation is about acquiring knowledge, suggested by the use of the word “learn.” This learning and preparation may help give meaning to earthly suffering, but the form of the poem suggests another kind of lesson as well.

  The second stanza, together with the last three, provide similar visions—one earthly and one heavenly. The young boy grows up with the love, care, and affection of his mother, who holds him close to her as she talks about the afterlife. Then, in the subsequent image of the afterlife presented in the last three stanzas, the boy has a similar relationship with God, a relationship that is loving, nurturing, and akin to the love between a mother and child.

  With this in mind, then, the “learn[ing]” of earthly experience could also be a question of learning how to love and be loved. In turn, the speaker wishes to show the same kind of care and affection for the “little English boy,” picturing the two of them as God’s “lambs” set free from the limitations of earthly identity.

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Little Black Boy”

• Lines 1-4

  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 bereav'd of light.

  The poem begins with the speaker talking about his upbringing and his relationship with his mother. He explains that he was born in "the southern wild," an allusion to Africa (which lies far to the south of England). Consonance and assonance in "mother" and "southern" link these words together, lending the poem a kind of sing-song, bouncy rhythm from the start.

  Line 2 then begins to develop its antithesis between blackness and whiteness. The boy is aware of his skin color, but professes that his "soul"—that is, who he is on the inside—is "white." The poem is trying to relate the well-established religious symbolism of light and dark (good and evil) with the skin color. By stating that his "soul is white" the speaker argues that his soul is faithful and pure, regardless of what he looks like. The exclamation mark after "O!" creates a pause, or caesura, in the line that marks the strength of the speaker's feeling.

  In lines 3 and 4, the boy compares himself with an "English child." The other boy is "white as an angel," making it seem—given the way that Christianity links whiteness/light to goodness—that he is somehow more Godly than the speaker himself. The white boy looks angelic, because angels are so frequently depicted as being white and shrouded in a bright aura of shining light. The common rhyme of "white" with "light" in this stanza reinforces this connection.

  If skin color really is an indicator of godliness, worries the speaker, then his own dark skin makes him look as if he is "bereav'd of light" (lacking in the light of God). Line 4 uses heavy /b/ alliteration through "but," "black," and "bereav'd," defining the line with one particular attribute in a way that echoes how the boy is defined by his skin. "Bereav'd" is an important word choice because it suggests a sense of loss and sorrow. Though the reader learns little of the speaker's circumstances, his perception of inferiority—or of the potential to be judged as inferior—could be based on his experiences of the world thus far (the Atlantic slave trade, for example, was in full swing).

  The form established in this stanza will continue throughout the poem. Each stanza is a quatrain, meaning it has four lines, that fall in an ABAB rhyme scheme. The meter is iambic pentameter, meaning each line has five poetic feet in a da-DUM rhythm. All of these attributes make the poem seem rather simple and familiar, which is fitting given that its speaker is a child.

  Ironically, and likely unintentionally, even in the first stanza the poem starts to show some of the racist attitudes that it attempts to argue against. For example, Blake associates Africa with uncivilized wildness and a lack of moral and social refinement. These types of arguments were often used to justify the conquering of nonwhite peoples and the enslavement of Black men, women, and children. It's important to keep such context in mind while reading the poem, which reflects many of the racist ideas of its time even as it pushes for equality.

• Lines 5-8

  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.

  

  

• Lines 9-12

  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.

  

  

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• Lines 13-16

  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 sun-burnt face
  Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

  

  

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• Lines 17-20

  For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
  The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
  Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
  And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

  

  

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• Lines 21-24

  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:

  

  

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• Lines 25-28

  I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear,
  To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
  And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
  And be like him and he will then love me.

  

  

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“The Little Black Boy” Symbols

• 

  Light

  Light, and sunlight in particular, plays an important role in the poem. Its symbolism can get a bit tricky/murky, however, since Blake plays into ideas of lightness as representative of purity and innocence while also insisting that the Black speaker's skin color actually brings him closer to God.

  Most broadly, the sun in the poem represents God himself, as well as his warmth and love. The sun is essential to life on the planet, a fact that the speaker's mother talks about in the third stanza. She says that the sun's rays are the "beams of [God's] love"; the physical effects of the sun, then, come to represent the way that God nurtures all life. As is stated in lines 11-12, "flowers and trees and beasts and men" received "comfort" and "joy" from the sun and, therefore, from God. The sun itself is a creation of God, too, and so also represents the awesomeness of his divine power.

  When the speaker says in the first stanza that he is "bereav'd of light," he is saying that he looks on the outside as though he has received none of this nourishment, warmth, and love from God—an assumption that the speaker's mother is quick to dismantle as the poem moves forward.

  While the English book looks "white as an angel"—with whiteness/light again being linked to purity and innocence—blackness in the poem represents a different relationship to God. Black people are described as having "sun-burnt face[s]," a frankly racist way of describing their skin color. Blake is trying to make the point, though, that dark skin too can be a sign of God's love, as it represents the absorption those aforementioned "beams." The poem thus suggests that Black people might be better prepared to "bear" the "heat" of God. That's why the Black boy pictures himself shading the white English boy.

  As noted throughout this guide, take care to remember that the thinking here is predicated on racism. Blackness has nothing to do with being "burnt," a descriptor that implies Black people are damaged in some way. Having the speaker find love only when being more "like" the English boy (or God) and also shading the English boy in heaven reinforce stereotypes of Black people as subservient to white people. Even in heaven, it seems, the speaker is marked out as separate from the "little English boy." Perhaps Blake was aware of this and is making an ironic commentary on the speaker's naivety. Even so, the poem's argument for racial equality exhibits the racism it seeks to condemn.

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• 

  Lambs

  The speaker compares himself and the English boy to lambs two times in the poem. This isn't because lambs seem like fun, happy animals; it's because lambs are symbolic of innocence and purity in the Christian tradition. Lams are also representative of Christ himself, who is sometimes portrayed as depicted as the Agnus dei, or lamb of God. The speaker is saying that, once race is erased in heaven, both the speaker and the English boy will be pure and innocent, and thus able to rejoice.

  Lambs pop up in a lot of Blake's work. Blake essentially thought that people were naturally filled with purity, love, and joy, but that children eventually lost such innocence. In becoming "like lambs" in heaven, the speaker and English boy regain that innocence and, in doing so, become closer to God.

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“The Little Black Boy” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Alliteration

  The poem uses alliteration throughout. The first alliteration occurs in the first opening words of the poem:

  My mother bore me in the southern wild,

  The repeated use of the phrase throughout the poem shows the importance of the speaker's mother in shaping how the speaker sees the world. The alliteration has a gentle playfulness, convening the intimacy and affection between mother and son.

  The rest of the stanza uses prominent /b/ alliteration:

  And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
  White as an angel is the English child:
  But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

  The alliteration associates dark skin with the state of being "bereav'd of light," building a sense that it is somehow inferior (or seen as inferior). Likewise with the link to the word "but," which is often a word that signals the introduction of a problem or obstacle (e.g., "I was going to go the shops, but they were closed"). Though the poem tries to suggest that race is irrelevant—at least in the afterlife—it is also subconsciously reinforces the idea that being Black represents a kind of flaw or fault.

  This is picked up in line 15, where "black bodies" are portrayed as having "sun-burnt" faces, with the image of burning suggesting that something is wrong with black skin. The poem implies that this is because Black people are more adept at "bear[ing]" the "beams" of God's love, alluding to the heat and sun of the African continent. It's a somewhat confusing image because being "burnt" suggests that Black people do not really "bear" these rays effectively.

  In line 18, the poem uses alliteration (and consonance) to suggest the presence of God's voice:

  The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.

  Notice how this cluster of alliteration seems to turn up the poetic volume of the poem (especially if read out loud), thus helping to create a sense of drama around the moment when God finally speaks to humankind.

  After God speaks and invites humankind back into paradise (and/or heaven), the boys will live out joyful, carefree existences free from the limitations of earthly identity. Here the poem uses the alliterative simile "like lambs" to describe this eternal happiness and child-like innocence. The speaker imagines himself stroking his (divine) father's hair: "I'll send and stroke his silver hair[.]" This alliteration suggests intimacy and affection, and gently echos the use of alliteration to describe the other nurturing relationship in the poem—mother and son.

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• Allusion

  

  
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• Juxtaposition

  

  

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• Asyndeton

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

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• Polysyndeton

  

  

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• Simile

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

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"The Little Black Boy" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Bore
• Southern wild
• Bereav'd
• Noonday
• Bear
• Grove
• Rejoice
• Joy

• Gave birth to.

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Little Black Boy”

• Form

  "The Little Black Boy" has seven stanzas, totaling 28 lines. Each is a quatrain (a four-line stanza), which is typical of Blake's poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience. The poem has a nursery rhyme-like simplicity, which ties in with the speaker being a child.

  The boy starts by talking about his birth, before devoting the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth stanzas to an anecdote about his mother—the lesson she taught him about how the world was made, what it means to exist in that world, and the promises of a paradise-like afterlife. The boy then concludes with a vision of this afterlife, when he and his counterpart, the white English boy, will cast off their earthly identities ("cloud") and play together joyfully in the presence of God. The poem thus attempts to bring together in harmony the two opposites that it has presented throughout.

  The poem can also be considered a dramatic monologue of sorts, in which Blake, a white man, throws his voice into an experience that he can't actually relate to very well, if at all (more on the issues here and the poem's racism in the Speaker section of this guide).

• Meter

  Most of the lines in "The Little Black Boy" are written in iambic pentameter. This means each line has five iambs, metrical feet with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern (da-DUM). Blake's poems often feature a lot of metrical variation, but this poem is fairly steady and regular. The first two lines show the iambic pentameter in full motion:

  My moth- | er bore | me in | the south- | ern wild,
  And I | am black, | but O! || my soul | is white;

  The overall regularity gives the poem a simple, child-like sound fitting with the young speaker.

  There are some important moments in which the meter changes. Take lines 7 and 21, which both depict a moment of tenderness between the speaker and his mother:

  She took | me on | her lap | and kissed | me,
  [...]
  Thus did | my moth- | er say | and kissed | me,

  Both lines omit the fifth and final stress. Lines which end on an unstressed syllable are known as feminine endings. This lack of stress gives these lines a gentle quality that conveys the intimacy between mother and son. This technique, in which a line is intentionally incomplete, is known as catalexis.

  Line 9 also presents an interesting variation:

  Look on | the ris- | ing sun: | there God | does live

  Here, the first iambic foot can be read as swapped around to make a trochee (stressed-unstressed, DUM-da). This places weight on the word "Look," which is an instruction issued by the mother to her son. This stress makes the word feel important, and highlights the value of the lesson taught by the mother to the young speaker (a lesson which forms the way he sees the world).

  The same trochaic substitution appears earlier in the poem, too. In line 3, the first-foot trochee places extra emphasis on the word "White":

  White as | an an- | gel is | the Eng- | lish child:

  This helps demonstrate how important whiteness and blackness are to the boy's perception of his place in the world.

• Rhyme Scheme

  As with many Blake poems, "The Little Black Boy" has a strict rhyme scheme throughout. In this case, each quatrain stanza runs:

  ABAB

  Four-line stanzas with this scheme are sometimes known as heroic quatrains, or elegiac quatrains. For the most part, this rhyme scheme serves to give the poem a child-like simplicity to match with the young speaker (other poems in the Songs of Innocence do this too).

  There are a couple of instances in which the rhymed end-words say something specific about the poem's subject. Lines 2 and 4 make a pair out of "white" and "light," for instance, which is an important association throughout the poem. Indeed, the conflation of whiteness with light—which has symbolic connotations of divinity and purity—forms part of the speaker's anxiety about his own skin color. Rhyming them here shows how fundamentally literal whiteness (skin color) is linked to symbolic whiteness, even as the speaker refers specifically to the "white[ness]" of his "soul."

  In lines 18 and 20, the poem presents another significant pairing: "voice" and "rejoice." In this section, the speaker talks about a moment in the future when God will announce that humankind can return to paradise and/or heaven (the poem doesn't specify). God's "voice," then, will make humankind "rejoice." This demonstrates the way in which the anticipation of this future moment holds such an important place in the speaker's mind—and will perhaps work as a coping mechanism for the inevitable racism he will encounter as he gets older.

“The Little Black Boy” Speaker

• The speaker of the poem is the little Black boy of the title. The poem is taken from the Songs of Innocence, meaning it is meant to represent an innocent perspective (sometimes to the point of naivety).

  The speaker talks about his birth in "the southern wild" (a problematic reference to Africa) and displays anxiety about his skin color. He is particularly troubled by the symbolic associations of whiteness/darkness and how these fit with his own skin color. He views his counterpart—the white "little English boy"—as more angelic, in appearance at least. His own "blackness," to him, makes him look as if he is "bereav'd of [divine] light." He then explains the lesson that his mother taught him—that earthly identity, including skin color, is nothing but a "cloud." These temporary identities, he believes, will be cast off in the Christian afterlife, in which he and the English boy will play together "like lambs" in the presence of God.

  While the poem attempts to put forward a message of equality, it is problematic from start to finish. These problems in part stem from Blake's decision to inhabit the voice of a young Black boy, a life experience he would know little about. Most critics agree that Blake's poetry, generally speaking, does argue in favor of equality in a way that is ahead of its time. That doesn't place the poem beyond critique, however, and it's important to recognize that the poem displays some very same racial stereotyping that it argues against. For example, Blake repeatedly implies that being Black is somehow inferior—that having dark skin indicates sun damage, for instance, and that Africa is a "wild" place compared to England. Such thinking is simply racist.

“The Little Black Boy” Setting

• The poem is told entirely from the perspective of child mentioned in the title. In terms of time, the poem moves from the boy's past to a vision of the future.

  The poem has a parable-like quality. The boy remembers a lesson his mother taught him about the creation of the world, his place in it, and what to expect after his earthly life. The presentation of this lesson as a memory suggests that the boy is no longer in "the southern wild" (an allusion to Africa), and the way in which he compares himself to an "English child" perhaps implies that he is now in England. The poem doesn't confirm this, however, and it's important to note that there is very little focus on actual lived experience as a Black person in a white-dominated world. Indeed, the Black speaker is almost entirely focused on the afterlife, as if it is only there that he can really start living in "comfort" and "joy." The memory of his mother suggests that the speaker has been separated from her, perhaps indicating that either he, she, or both have been sold into slavery (though, again, there is nothing specific in the poem to confirm this).

  Stanzas 1 to 5, then, are set in both the speaker's memory and where that memory takes place: his childhood home in Africa. The poem presents this as a harsh environment of brutal sun, which carries God's "beams of love." The speaker then shifts focus from earthly life to a vision of heaven and/or paradise (either would make sense). He believes that God will welcome humankind—regardless of race—back into his divine kingdom, and that it is in that new environment that both he and the English boy will live innocent, carefree, and joyful lives. In one sense, then, the poem is set within the speaker's own imagination—and reference to his actual lived experience is notably absent.

Literary and Historical Context of “The Little Black Boy”

• Literary Context

  "The Little Black Boy" was included in Blake's main collection Songs of Innocence and Experience. The Innocence section of the book was first published in 1789, coinciding with the onset of the French Revolution.

  As with many of Blake's poems, "The Little Black Boy" seeks to address a perceived injustice, and to place the life of someone who is impoverished and/or oppressed in a new religious context. Usually, this means presenting a vision of religion that runs counter to the institutions of the day. Indeed, Blake saw organized religion as a malign influence on people's lives, while also maintaining strongly held but fiercely independent Christian beliefs.

  Here, the poem appears to argue that earthly identity—including skin color—is just a "cloud," a temporary identity. In the afterlife, children of all races will play together free under the watchful and loving eye of God, and free from their original identities.

  It's important to note that there are two ways of interpreting this message. It could be taken at face value, but other poems in the Songs of Innocence are more clearly ironic, suggesting that the "innocent" perspective is sometimes naive and sadly misguided. In "The Chimney Sweeper," for example, a young chimney sweep fails—though the failure can hardly be blamed on him—to realize the poverty and hardship that awaits him. Like the Black boy here, he holds onto an idealized vision of the afterlife as a way of explaining in advance the suffering that will almost certainly come his way.

  Perhaps because of his lack of personal experience, Blake's poetry rarely touches specifically on race (through frequently deals with injustice). However, one of his longer works, The Visions of Albions (1793), does focus on slavery. Another poem in the ​​​​​​​Songs of Innocence, "The Lamb," will inform readers on Blake's use of the lamb simile here. Readers should also look at the illustrations done by Blake for the narrative account of a colonial soldier, John Stedman (a link is provided in the Resources section of this guide).

  Blake is often considered alongside the Romantic poets, though he undoubtedly sits apart as a writer of independent spirit and vision. Both William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge occasionally touched on the issue of race, which was intertwined with the issue of slavery. Wordsworth talks about the abolitionist cause in "To Thomas Clarkson. On the Final Passing of the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade," "To Toussaint L'Overture," and, at times, in his longer poem ​​​​​​​The Prelude. Some critics view Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as an expression and examination of white guilt regarding the slave trade. Readers should also investigate the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, who was a Black woman sold into slavery around the age eight (see: "On Being Brought from Africa to America").

  Historical Context

  "The Little Black Boy" is notably lacking in specific historical context, though this is generally in keeping with Blake's poetic style. Blake saw himself as a kind of visionary and an outsider, and viewed his poetic subjects as those concerned with the most fundamental questions about existence that often went beyond the specific circumstances of the 18th century. That said, specific historical trends like the Industrial Revolution—the rapid growth of machine-based labor—do occupy and important place in his poetry. But in this poem, there is very little about the specifics of Black experience which, of course, Blake didn't and couldn't really know about. This is a white man attempting to speak on behalf of a Black child.

  The true horrors of racism and the ways in which that racism structured society lurk in the background of the poem. Indeed, the speaker's instinctive sense that he is somehow inferior to the white English boy suggests he has at least some knowledge of the way in which his skin color will prevent him from living the same kind of life as his counterpart. In the late 1700s, the Transatlantic slave trade was in full flow. European ships sailed to Africa, where white slave traders enslaved Black men, women, and children and, for the most part, transported them across the Atlantic to new lives of unspeakable cruelty and oppression.

  This trade, at the time, was officially endorsed by the British monarchy and it is on the profits of slavery that the British Empire, that came to rule over vast swathes of the world, was built. An estimated 12 million slaves were transported across the Atlantic, with approximately one and half million dying in transit.

  The other important aspect of this poem is its relationship to Christianity. The speaker—and Blake himself—struggles to place skin color in the context of the religious symbolism of whiteness/light. Throughout the Bible—and, indeed, other major religious texts—whiteness and light are conflated with positive attributes like purity, love, knowledge, and divinity. Blackness/darkness are often linked to evil, the Devil, death, and destruction. The boy feels anxious about his skin color because of these associations, but it's always worth remembering that this anxiety is projected onto the little boy by Blake.

More “The Little Black Boy” Resources

• External Resources

  • Blake's Illustrations — See the poem in its original format, with Blake's own visual depictions (plus other illustrations/engravings).  

  • Blake's Radicalism — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's radicalism. 

  • Blake's Visions — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's religious visions. 

  • Blake and Stedman — Illustrations by Blake of a narrative written by John Stedman, a colonial soldier. 

  • The Transatlantic Slave Trade — A valuable resource about the history of slavery. 

• LitCharts on Other Poems by William Blake

  • A Dream

  • Ah! Sun-flower

  • A Poison Tree

  • Earth's Answer

  • Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience)

  • Holy Thursday (Songs of Innocence)

  • Infant Joy

  • Infant Sorrow

  • Introduction (Songs of Innocence)

  • London

  • Nurse's Song (Songs of Experience)

  • Nurse's Song (Songs of Innocence)

  • The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience)

  • The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)

  • The Clod and the Pebble

  • The Divine Image

  • The Ecchoing Green

  • The Fly

  • The Garden of Love

  • The Human Abstract

  • The Lamb

  • The Little Vagabond

  • The School Boy

  • The Sick Rose

  • The Tyger

  • To Autumn

  • To the Evening Star