Summary of poem " The Schoolboy " by William Blake.
Answers
“The Schoolboy” by William Blake is a told from the perspective of a young boy who is espousing the cause of many children, that school is negatively impacting him.
The poem begins with the young narrator speaking on his ideal morning. He wakes and hears the birds and the “distant huntsman” blowing his “horn.” The second stanza jumps to the mornings he despairs of in which he is forced to leave his peaceful sanctuary and go to school.
The next two stanzas are infused with melodrama and are meant to elicit sympathy with the reader. The boy describes his miserable days at school and how, like a trapped bird that cannot sing, he should not be required to learn in restraints.
The speaker turns to plead with his parents. He tells them that if this continues his “buds” are going to be “nipped,” his joy ripped from him, and the loss of his childhood will result in an unpreparedness for life. He will not be able to last through the real trials of life, or winters as he describes them.
"The School Boy" is a poem written in the pastoral tradition that focuses on the downsides of formal learning. It considers how going to school on a summer day "drives all joy away". The boy in this poem is more interested in escaping his classroom than he is with anything his teacher is trying to teach. In lines 16-20, a child in school is compared to a bird in a cage. Meaning something that was born to be free and in nature, is instead trapped inside and made to be obedient.