William Blake The Human Abstract Analysis

“The Human Abstract” is a poem written by the English poet William Blake, which was published as part of his compilation Songs of Experience in 1794. Blake is usually enclosed in the First Generation of Romantic poets along with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and Clare; however Blake is a very peculiar and individual author and artist. As Bronowski (1966) states, “he never tried in the least to fit into the world; simply, innocently and completely, he was a rebel.”

“The Human Abstract” is a poem of 24 lines comprised in six quatrains, each containing two rhyming couplets. The title corresponds to the human capacity to conceive erroneous beliefs and perform evil acts. Described as “a little mythical vision of the growth of error” (Swinburne

In the first part, which comprises stanzas one and two, the poetic voice (William Blake) argues that pity could not exist unless poverty existed within society, and mercy would be avoided if everyone was allowed to be happy. Therefore, Blake establishes opposites that complement each other. Throughout many of his works, Blake emphasises the field of opposites. He “remained fascinated with the celebration of ‘contraries’ and the opposed ways of feeling” (Sanders 2004, 358). Thus, what the author is trying to convey in these first lines of the poem is that the existence of the poor means the rich exist, and with them comes the pity they have for the poor. Furthermore, he is justifying the

Only in the “miscreative brain” of fallen men can such a thing strike its tortuous root and bring forth its fatal flower.” (Swinburne 1868, 121).

Thus, these stanzas bring to mind Blake’s questioning on religion. He seems to be portraying the idea of Christian religion as a mysterious practice whose only purpose is to deceive devout Christians, who are represented by the caterpillar and the fly that feed on the tree. We are able to see how Blake “attacks negative moralizing, which he associates with the church, as opposed to a true sense of religion” (Peck and Coyle 2002, 155)

In the final stanza, “The Gods of the earth and sea” (l. 21) search soil that will deliver such fruit, yet they are not able to find the tree for the reason that “there grows one in the Human Brain” (l. 24). This final line suggests that all the values and vices mentioned throughout the poem (pity, mercy, cruelty, humility, mystery and deceit) emerge from human’s abstract reasoning. ‘Abstract’ is rather an obscure term, yet it can be interpreted as “an epitome of what is to be found in nature of man” (Gillham 2010,