Blakes Little Girl Lost
"A Little GIRL Lost" from Songs of Experience is one of Blake's most important poems. Though judging the aesthetic value of a poem is nearly impossible, I would contend that "A Little Girl Lost" is "better" than "The Little Girl Lost" found in Songs of Innocence. Perhaps because "A Little Girl Lost" was composed as an afterthought to its original counterpart, having been first written in "Innocence," it acts as a conclusion to the original poem. The two poems both observe a young girl as she encounters a world filled with innocence (in "The Little Girl Lost") and a world of experience ("A Little Girl Lost"). In first poem, a young seven-year-old girl named Lyca falls asleep in the wilderness under a tree. While her parents worry about her, she sleeps innocently in the woods with a lion prancing around her while she slumbers. The poetic vision seems to be a portrayal of young love--of innocence unprotected in the passion-haunted forest. In the second poem, found in "Experience," the feeling shifts from innocence to suggest a subversive course of love exploration. The young girl, Ona, discovers passion only to find that her father has a negative view on the very love she has just been introduced to. "A Little Girl Los
The poem is intensely dramatic in form and character. Unlike "The Little Girl Lost", which employs a repeated trochaic trimater prosody throughout all 10 stanzas, "A Little Girl Lost" adds variation to the rhythm and meter. The number of stanzas is limited to a prologue and six five-line verses. The rhyming pattern helps create rhythm in the poem, following a model of AA, BBB/ CC, DDD /EE, FFF, etc. This allows each stanza its own little narrative and separates them, in turn preparing the reader for a slightly different theme with each new verse. First the prologue or Chorus tells the reader the meaning of the poem. Then the curtain lifts on a scene of pastoral beauty, transporting us to an ancient world that is no more. In the nest scene the story begins. It is a story of this "Age of Gold," continuing through three scenes representative of dawn, day, and night. There the first 'act' ends. The second act shows us the destruction of innocence. Ona, the fair maiden, if shattered to find that her discovery of love is nothing but a terrible desecration of white and sacred memories for her old father. Upon this scene, where love becomes taboo, an image of the Garden of Eden and the Fall becomes evident. The Fall is due to the entrance of "the Law" (of God), much like the parental laws Ona is restricted by under her father. The Garden of Eden abolishes all innocence and creates a world of loneliness for its inhabitants. Much like Lyca sleeps alone in "The Little Girl Lost," Ona is left alone
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Approximate Word count = 1019
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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