"The Divine Image" seems deceptively simple at its start. The first lines here feel like a Christian hymn, and, at first glance, not an especially unusual one at that: they declare that everyone in "distress" prays to qualities often associated with God—"Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love"—and then that they thank those same qualities for their good fortune.
The shape of these lines also feels pretty traditional. Using common meter—alternating lines of iambic tetrameter (four da-DUMs in a row) and iambic trimeter (three da-DUMs)—and a simple, singsongy ABCB rhyme scheme, this first stanza could come straight from a nursery rhyme or a ballad. In other words, the speaker of this poem is working right with readers' expectations, opening with familiar, comforting rhythms, shapes, and ideas.
But this is a poem by William Blake—and that means it's going to turn out to be anything but traditional. Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, the 1789 collection this poem comes from, expresses his fiery, prophetic, and unorthodox vision of Christianity. This poem will use a deceptively gentle shape to deliver a revolutionary message.
God, to this poem's speaker, isn't just a merciful, pitying, peaceful, loving dad-in-the-clouds. (Blake rejected this idea of a separate, distant God outright, dismissively calling such a figure "Nobodaddy.") God is right here on earth, all the time, actually embodied by every person alive.
Presenting this idea in a form as simple as a nursery rhyme, the speaker is actually offering a challenge: this radical belief, the speaker seems to say, is in fact so pure, instinctive, and fundamental that I can sing it like a child's song.