The Little Black Boy Revealed

William Blake’s poem, The Little Black Boy, was published during the time when slavery was still legal and the abolition act was still not fully considered. This work of William Blake focuses on racism and how every man is created equal to each other. The poem starts with the little black boy saying how he was born in the south and is implied that he is a slave. Black is always used as the color that symbolizes evil and sin in terms of religion, while white symbolizes the opposite innocence and purity. When it says, “And I am black, but O, my soul is white!” is saying that appearances can be deceiving because on the outside he is “evil” but on the inside he is actually pure and you can't judge everyone based on the color of their skin.

When his mother said, “Look at the rising sun: there God does live,/ And gives His light, and gives His heat away” is using the sun as a metaphor for God and the “rising sun” refers that there is going to be a change, and this change will relate to slavery. In the poem, it is implied that black people are more connected to God than the white people because of their “black bodies” and “sunburnt face” that result from the sun’s rays, and since God is the sun, blacks received more of his “beams of love”. Once everyone learns to love, have compassion for each other and treat each other as equals, when they die they will hear His voice and go to heaven surrounding his “golden tent” everyone united.

The stanza, “When I from black and he from white cloud free,/ And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,/ I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear/ To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;/ And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,/ And be like him, and he will then love me” refers to when the little black boy and English boy get free from their “clouds”, which are their bodies, they will leave their body behind but their souls would go to God’s “tent” or kingdom. Once there, the little black boy “shades” the English boy because the paleness of him shows that he was distanced from God and his love by the treatment of slaves. When the English boy learns that they are all the same, the little black boy will then stand up and unshield him, letting him receive all of God’s rays of love. The little black boy then stroke the English boy’s silver hair caused of the “rays” because now they are both equal and love one another.

When Blake used the neutral colors gold and silver for God’s “golden tent” and the English boy’s “silver hair” because they symbolize moral values, spirituality and wisdom. Spirituality was gold because that is where all of the spirits went afterlife, while wisdom was silver for the hair symbolizing that the English boy has gained experience making him wiser.  The picture (above) by William Blake illustrates the main theme of the poem, black and white children are all the same because God knows no difference since they are all his.