{"collection":"Northern European Mythology","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/eng/sie/sie07.htm","path":"neu/eng/sie/sie07.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/sie/sie07.htm","text":"Songs of Innocence and of Experience, by William Blake, [1789-1794]\nMy mother bore me in the southern wild,\n And I am black, but O! my soul is white,\n White as an angel is the English child:\n But I am black as if bereav\u2019d of light.\nMy mother taught me underneath a tree\n And sitting down before the heat of day,\n She took me on her lap and kissed me,\n And pointing to the east began to say.\nLook on the rising sun: there God does live\n And gives his light, and gives his heat away.\n And flowers and trees and beasts and men recieve\n Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.\nAnd we are put on earth a little space,\n That we may learn to bear the beams of love.\n And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face\n Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.\nFor\nFor when our souls have learn\u2019d the heat to bear\n The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice,\n Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,\n And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.\nThus did my mother say and kissed me.\n And thus I say to little English boy.\n When I from black and he from white cloud free,\n And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:\nIll shade him from the heat till he can bear,\n To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.\n And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,\n And be like him and he will then love me.","title":"Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Songs of Innocence:...","type":"page"}