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The School Boy Summary & Analysis
by William Blake

The School Boy Summary & Analysis
by William Blake

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Symbols
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “The School Boy”

1I love to rise in a summer morn,

2When the birds sing on every tree;

3The distant huntsman winds his horn,

4And the skylark sings with me:

5O what sweet company!

6But to go to school in a summer morn,—

7O it drives all joy away!

8Under a cruel eye outworn,

9The little ones spend the day

10In sighing and dismay.

11Ah then at times I drooping sit,

12And spend many an anxious hour;

13Nor in my book can I take delight,

14Nor sit in learning's bower,

15Worn through with the dreary shower.

16How can the bird that is born for joy

17Sit in a cage and sing?

18How can a child, when fears annoy,

19But droop his tender wing,

20And forget his youthful spring!

21O father and mother if buds are nipped,

22And blossoms blown away;

23And if the tender plants are stripped

24Of their joy in the springing day,

25By sorrow and care's dismay,—

26How shall the summer arise in joy,

27Or the summer fruits appear?

28Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,

29Or bless the mellowing year,

30When the blasts of winter appear?

  • “The School Boy” Introduction

    • "The School Boy" appears in William Blake's 1794 collection Songs of Experience, which he later gathered into the volume Songs of Innocence and of Experience. The poem is a dramatic monologue in the voice of an 18th-century English schoolboy, who hates being cooped up in his classroom and would much rather play outside in the summer sun. The poem treats his frustration as not only serious but tragic, suggesting that the school system traps students like "bird[s]" in "cage[s]" and prevents them from achieving their full potential. The schoolboy closes with a plea to his parents, warning that his youthful promise may be "nipped" in the "bud[]" if he's not allowed to roam free, play, and enjoy childhood.

  • “The School Boy” Summary

    • I love getting out of bed on a summer morning, when all the trees are full of chirping birds. Far off, a hunter blows his horn, and the skylark's song blends with my own singing. What wonderful companionship!

      But going to school on a summer morning—that spoils my happiness! Beneath the cruel eye of a weary teacher, the little students sigh and feel depressed all day.

      Sometimes I sit there for hours, slumped and full of anxiety. I can't take any pleasure in my school book, nor can I learn there; it's like I'm sitting under trees that have been worn down by rain.

      How can a bird that's born for a life of happiness and freedom possibly flourish in a cage? In an environment filled with fear, how can kids do anything but cower like vulnerable birds, and lose their youthful spirit?

      Oh, my parents: if youth's potential is nipped in the bud, its flourishing cut off, its happiness stolen early and replaced by grief and hardship—how will the springtime of youth flower into a happy, healthy, productive adulthood? How will the full-grown adults harvest anything from life's sorrows, or enjoy their later years, once they're faced with the challenges of old age?

  • “The School Boy” Themes

    • Theme Education, Play, and Freedom

      Education, Play, and Freedom

      William Blake's "The School Boy" adopts the voice of a child who is unhappy and restless at school. This schoolboy would much rather play outside in the summer sunshine than stay indoors learning. With great sympathy, the poem portrays his summer schooling—and in many ways his school system—as a form of "cruel" captivity. It compares the boy to a gloomy "bird [...] in a cage," implying that play, independence, and freedom are healthier for children (especially during summer!) than formal education. In Blake's view, cooping kids up in a classroom is not only harsh but unnatural: it crushes their spirits and hinders their development as people.

      From the start, the poem sides with the schoolboy who longs to play outdoors, noting how he's "joy[ful]" when playing outside but "anxious" and "dismay[ed]" in the classroom. He's happy enough to "sing[]" when he wakes in the morning, yet feels restless and oppressed once he's under the "cruel eye" of the schoolteacher. He can't take any "delight" in his "book," either; the sunny weather is so alluring that "learning[]" is effectively impossible. In fact, being trapped in this classroom makes him more like the "outworn" teacher: "drooping," weary, and sad. He can't be a healthy, happy kid here, as he later insists to his parents.

      Indeed, the schoolboy—and the poem—argues that school in summertime is basically a prison for children. Rather than accelerating kids' development, it shuts down their progress and causes them "sorrow." The schoolboy compares himself to a "cage[d]" bird who is "born for joy" but cannot "sing" under these punishing conditions. In other words, the summer schoolroom makes him miserable and prevents him from reaching his potential. Unlike the "skylark" who "sings with [him]" when he's outside, he feels trapped here—unable to express or enjoy himself at all.

      The poem implies, then, that a strict, dour approach to education thwarts children's actual needs and inclinations. It's as unnatural and wrong as locking up a free bird. And some of this criticism can be read as applying to the entire school system of Blake's time—not just summer school.

    • Theme Childhood Potential vs. Maturity

      Childhood Potential vs. Maturity

      "The School Boy" ends with an extended metaphor linking the joys of childhood with the potential rewards of adulthood. Through this metaphor, the schoolboy speaker warns that inhibiting children's "joy" will prevent them from fulfilling their potential. Moreover, it will keep them from blossoming into healthy, resilient adults capable of withstanding all the challenges maturity brings. By extension, the poem argues that childhood experience, good or bad, profoundly shapes adult life. Respecting kids' independence will cause them to blossom; cruelly regimenting their lives will "nip[]" their potential in the "bud[]."

      The poem protests that school is shutting down, not nourishing, the schoolboy's potential. Like a caged "bird," the schoolboy feels he has no choice but to "droop his tender wing / And forget his youthful spring!" In other words, he's forced to grow up too soon, before he has a chance to play, explore the world, and develop to his fullest. There's a metaphorical connection here with the "huntsman" mentioned at the start of the poem. Just as the hunter shoots down birds, the school threatens to kill the boy's youthful promise (by crushing his joy).

      The schoolboy's closing speech, therefore, is a plea for the adults in his life to nourish his potential—just by letting him be a kid. In an extended metaphor, he warns his "father and mother" that "if buds are nipped" too early, they can't grow into the fruits of "summer" and the harvest season. In other words, if children aren't allowed to be children, they'll never grow into healthy and functional adults. Strictness and cruelty toward children won't toughen them up, the schoolboy warns; in fact, it will make them less resilient. If "tender plants"—that is, young kids—"are stripped / Of their joy" in youth, they'll be much more vulnerable to "griefs" and "the blasts of winter" later on. They won't have developed the independent spirit necessary to weather life's harshest events.

      Though these ideas may strike some modern parents and teachers as common sense, they broke from the prevailing wisdom of Blake's time. Strict schooling, rigid discipline, and child labor were all common in late-18th century and early 19th-century England. The poem therefore represents a plea for reform. Blake's choice of a young "School Boy" speaker, protesting on his own behalf, is a further attempt to honor the dignity and individuality of children.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The School Boy”

    • Lines 1-5

      I love to rise in a summer morn,
      When the birds sing on every tree;
      The distant huntsman winds his horn,
      And the skylark sings with me:
      O what sweet company!

      The poem begins on a joyful note. The title "The School Boy," combined with the speaker's childlike exuberance, signals that this is a dramatic monologue: a poem voiced by a character separate from the poet. In other words, the speaker here is a schoolboy—an unnamed, average, school-aged child in William Blake's 18th-century England—not Blake himself.

      Like many children, this schoolboy is a fan of summer. He declares that he "love[s] to rise in a summer morn"—in other words, he loves waking up on summer mornings. He delights in hearing "the birds sing on every tree" (a sign that he lives in the countryside, where there are lots of trees around). As he enthuses about the season, alliteration adds a gentle musicality to his language, so that the lines themselves seem to "sing":

      The distant huntsman winds his horn,
      And the skylark sings with me:
      O what sweet company!

      Those soft /h/ and /s/ sounds make the phrases themselves sound "sweet" and euphonious. The "huntsman" is a hunter of foxes or other game, "wind[ing]"—that is, blowing—his "horn" as a signal to his dogs or fellow hunters. Again, this detail evokes a rural setting—a pastoral landscape that the boy would like to be out enjoying, just as the hunter is. Meanwhile, a "skylark" seems to "sing[]" along with the boy in the trees or sky above. (Larks are famously active during the early morning hours.)

      Together, the huntsman and the lark seem to make for "sweet company," or wonderful companionship. But there's a touch of irony here, since the hunter is "distant" and the bird isn't human; in other words, the boy doesn't actually have any friends around. He may, in fact, be a little desperate for some "company." And as the rest of the poem makes clear, his joy in the morning is only too brief. He can't go out and play on this "summer morn," nor will he be "sing[ing]" for most of the day. He has to go to school instead.

    • Lines 6-10

      But to go to school in a summer morn,—
      O it drives all joy away!
      Under a cruel eye outworn,
      The little ones spend the day
      In sighing and dismay.

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    • Lines 11-15

      Ah then at times I drooping sit,
      And spend many an anxious hour;
      Nor in my book can I take delight,
      Nor sit in learning's bower,
      Worn through with the dreary shower.

    • Lines 16-20

      How can the bird that is born for joy
      Sit in a cage and sing?
      How can a child, when fears annoy,
      But droop his tender wing,
      And forget his youthful spring!

    • Lines 21-25

      O father and mother if buds are nipped,
      And blossoms blown away;
      And if the tender plants are stripped
      Of their joy in the springing day,
      By sorrow and care's dismay,—

    • Lines 26-30

      How shall the summer arise in joy,
      Or the summer fruits appear?
      Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
      Or bless the mellowing year,
      When the blasts of winter appear?

  • “The School Boy” Symbols

    • Symbol The Huntsman and Skylark

      The Huntsman and Skylark

      The "huntsman" and "skylark" in the first stanza are actual features of the schoolboy's setting, but they also take on symbolic meaning over the course of the poem.

      The skylark represents freedom and joy; it "sings" along with the boy when he wakes up in summertime. Unlike the boy, however, it doesn't have to go to school. Later in the poem, the boy compares himself to a "bird" in a "cage" as he languishes in school. He imagines him, and children like him, "droop[ing]" their "tender wing[s]" in this cruel environment. By now, the skylark represents all the freedom and joy the schoolboy doesn't have. Larks are also, famously, morning birds, so they may be associated here with the early years (the morning) of the boy's life—in other words, the youth he's wasting in the classroom.

      In this context, the "huntsman" might represent the threats facing innocence, joy, freedom, etc. This hunter could be hunting foxes or other game, not birds in particular. But he's a reminder that humans (adults in particular) are always trying to control and/or harm natural creatures (and children are often associated with the innocent, intuitive, "natural," etc.).

  • “The School Boy” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Repetition

      "The School Boy" uses several kinds of repetition, mainly for the purposes of emphasis and comparison/contrast.

      First, it repeats a number of thematically important words, including "summer" (four times), "bird"/"birds" (twice), "sing"/"sings" (three times), and "joy" (four times). All of these words relate to the speaker's natural, youthful exuberance—what he feels in the morning and would feel the rest of the day, if not for school. Essentially, he wants to be as joyful as a bird singing in summer! And while school hasn't crushed his spirit yet, it's coming dangerously close. ("Summer" weather and "birds" are also literal features of the poem's setting.)

      In lines 1 and 6, repetition helps the speaker draw this emotional contrast more directly. Whereas the schoolboy "love[s] to rise in a summer morn," he hates "to go to school in a summer morn." The parallel phrasing here emphasizes that summer should delight this child, but thanks to school, has disappointed him instead.

      Finally, the poem uses anaphora to drive home the speaker's points and underline his frustration. In the fourth stanza, for example, the repeated "How can" suggests a tone of pleading or indignation:

      How can the bird that is born for joy
      Sit in a cage and sing?
      How can a child, when fears annoy,
      But droop his tender wing, [...]

      Similarly, the last stanza repeats "Or" to convey an insistent tone, and to suggest a pile-up of potential consequences:

      How shall the summer arise in joy,
      Or the summer fruits appear?
      Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
      Or bless the mellowing year,
      When the blasts of winter appear?

      If his youthful exuberance is suppressed, the boy warns, he won't flourish in his early or later adulthood—the "summer" or the "winter" of his life.

    • Extended Metaphor

    • Rhetorical Question

    • Alliteration

  • “The School Boy” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Morn
    • Huntsman
    • Winds
    • Skylark
    • Outworn
    • Learning's bower
    • How can a child [...] But droop
    • Annoy
    • Care's
    • Mellowing
    • Blasts
    Morn

    • Old-fashioned synonym of "morning."

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The School Boy”

    • Form

      The poem consists of six five-line stanzas, or cinquains. These stanzas rhyme ABABB CDCDD, etc., and use a rough accentual meter with four or three stressed syllables per line. (The first and third lines of each stanza have four stressed syllables each; the others have three.) Hence, the form is a variant of the traditional poetic ballad, which uses rhymed four-line stanzas (quatrains) with alternating four-beat and three-beat lines.

      As its name implies, the ballad is a musical, songlike form (and is sometimes used in actual song lyrics). It began as very much a popular form, designed to be heard or read by a general audience, and it often features vivid dramatic characters, including speakers who are not the poet. All these things are true of Blake's variation on the ballad in "The School Boy." The poem is a dramatic monologue in relatively plain, approachable language, and it first appeared in Blake's Songs of Experience—a collection whose title reflects the songlike nature of its poems.

    • Meter

      "The School Boy" uses a bouncy accentual meter. The first and third lines of each stanza contain four stressed (accented) syllables, while the second, fourth, and fifth lines contain three (for the most part; there's variation throughout). At the same time, the total number of syllables in each line, and the placement of stresses, varies a bit.

      Many, though not all, of the feet here fall into iambs: that is, they feature an unstressed-stressed rhythm. As such, it's also possible to classify the poem as having a loose mixture of iambic tetrameter (four iambs per line) and iambic trimeter (three iambs per line).

      Here's how this sounds in the first stanza, for example:

      I love | to rise | in a sum- | mer morn,
      When the birds | sing on | ever- | y tree;
      The dis- | tant hunts- | man winds | his horn,
      And the sky- | lark sings | with me:
      O what | sweet com- | pany!

      There's a recognizable beat, but a little bit of looseness and bounce built into it.

      Here, this musical bounce (as well as the overall, ballad-like form of the poem) fits the character of the "School Boy," who likes to "sing[]" along with the birds. Of course, his free spirit is getting stifled by the dismal atmosphere of school—but the playful lilt of the meter hints that it hasn't been snuffed out quite yet.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      The first and third lines of each five-line stanza rhyme with each other, as do the second, fourth, and fifth lines. So the poem's general rhyme scheme is ABABB, etc.

      There's one variation, however: lines 6 and 8 pick up on the A rhymes of the first stanza, so instead of ABABB CDCDD, the first two stanzas actually rhyme ABABB ADADD.

      Most of the poem's rhymes are exact, but there's one slant rhyme ("sit"/"delight") in lines 11 and 13. These small variations, within a generally consistent rhyme scheme, might suggest a playful spontaneity trying to break through a strict pattern—much as the schoolboy's playful spirit longs to escape the strict confines of school.

  • “The School Boy” Speaker

    • The poem announces its speaker in the title. This is a dramatic monologue written in the voice of an average 18th-century "School Boy," not the voice of the poet himself.

      Like many children before and since, this schoolboy hates attending school, especially in the "summer." Unlike most children, he makes an extended, serious case that summer schooling is "cruel" and detrimental to his development. He does so in a pained address to his "father and mother," who are presumably forcing him to attend classes.

      For the most part, he speaks in relatively simple, accessible, childlike language (though some of his diction, such as "morn," sounds old-fashioned to 21st-century ears). When he's excited or unhappy, he bursts out in exclamations, just as real kids do (e.g., "O what sweet company!" or "O it drives all joy away!").

      Of course, this is still a poem, so it contains some poetic flourishes an actual schoolboy probably wouldn't make—such as the elegant phrase "how shall we gather what griefs destroy." Here, Blake's dramatic monologue seems to ask for a little dramatic (or poetic) license!

  • “The School Boy” Setting

    • The imagery in the first stanza suggests that the poem takes place in the countryside. The "birds sing[ing] on every tree" and the "huntsman [blowing] his horn" (while pursuing foxes or other game) clearly point to a rural setting. The season is "summer"—a time when kids typically like to enjoy the outdoors.

      Unfortunately for the speaker of this poem, he can't play outside: he's forced to go to school instead. He finds school dreary and prison-like, as though he were a "bird" in a "cage." His teacher is "cruel," and his classmates aren't enjoying themselves, either: "The little ones spend the day / In sighing and dismay."

      In short, the poem incorporates and juxtaposes two contrasting settings: the outdoor world of sunshine and freedom, and the indoor (classroom) world of discipline and confinement. It argues that, during summer especially, the first is much healthier for children than the second.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “The School Boy”

      Literary Context

      William Blake (1757-1827) is a poet unlike any other. Often considered one of the first of the English Romantics, he also stands apart from any movement as a unique philosopher, prophet, and artist.

      Blake wrote "The School Boy" in 1789 and printed it in Songs of Experience (1794), one of his most famous and important works. This group of poems formed the second section of his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience, a book that examines what Blake called "the two contrary states of the human soul."

      Many of the poems in Songs of Experience have a counterpart in Songs of Innocence, a twin poem that reads the same subjects from a different perspective. For instance, "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" both explore creation, divinity, and nature, but in very different ways! This outraged tirade against child poverty has just such a cousin: the subtly ironic "Holy Thursday" of Songs of Innocence, in which a softhearted speaker is charmed by the sight of all those sweet orphans on their way to church.

      Blake didn't just write poetry: he also designed, engraved, printed, painted, and published illuminated manuscripts using a technique he called the "infernal method." Blake painted his poems and pictures on copper plates with a resilient ink, then burned away the excess copper in a bath of acid—the opposite of the process most engravers used. But then, Blake often did the opposite of what other people did, believing that it was his role to "reveal the infinite that was hid" by custom and falsehood.

      Even among the often countercultural Romantics, then, Blake was an outlier. Samuel Taylor Coleridge himself—no stranger to a wild vision—once remarked that he was "in the very mire of common-place common-sense compared with Mr. Blake."

      While Blake was never widely known during his lifetime, he has become one of the most famous and beloved of poets since his death, and writers from Allen Ginsberg to Olga Tokarczuk to Philip Pullman claim him as a major influence.

      Historical Context

      William Blake spent much of his life railing against the cruelties of 19th-century British society—and he had plenty to rail against.

      The England of Blake's time was just getting caught up in the Industrial Revolution, a period during which the economy shifted from farming to manufacturing. The countryside began to empty out, and the cities began to swell. English class divisions, always intense, began to seem even more pronounced as impoverished workers lived cheek-by-jowl with the fashionable and wealthy in newly crowded towns.

      Workers during the early Industrial Revolution got a pretty raw deal. Even young children were forced to work in factories, dig in mines, and sweep chimneys (an absurdly dangerous job, contrary to the cheery Mary Poppins image many are familiar with: chimney-sweeps as young as three or four years old sometimes died of suffocation in narrow flues). Adults didn't have it much easier. With few regulations to keep factory owners in check, bosses could impose impossible working hours or withhold pay for any number of trifling offenses.

      Throughout Blake's period, educational opportunities varied widely based on class, geography, and other factors. According to W. B. Stephens's Education in Britain 1750-1914, "schools of some kind were within geographical reach of all but comparatively few [British] children" by 1750. But many kids were forced to work rather than attend school, and even those who did receive an education, like the speaker of "The School Boy," often faced strict, discipline-heavy, or even "cruel" learning environments.

      Blake's passionate, prophetic stance on humankind's innate divinity made him a fiery critic of the cruelty he saw all around him in his native London. And Blake was only one in a long series of writers who saw 19th-century education and labor conditions as an affront to humanity. Charles Dickens would later make similar protests in novels like David Copperfield, Hard Times, and Oliver Twist.

  • More “The School Boy” Resources

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