In reading Blake’s “Nurses Song” and viewing the images that are provided, Blake’s poem from “Songs of Experience” remind me much about a mother telling her children “been there, done that” and how mothers want more for their children, than what they had as children.  My mother always told me that she grew up with nearly nothing and she wanted to give my sister and I everything she never had.  She was never granted the freedom of playing all day and could not afford most of the luxuries that a lot of other kids had.  She recently told me, “When I was little, and I asked for something and my mom would say ‘When we get the money, you can have it’ it usually meant I would never have it.”  I can see this image from the images that were provided for this text.  The child in the image has an expressionless face and the mother is combing her hair and I feel like the mother is telling her something disciplinary.  I feel that these images mirror Blake’s unpleasant childhood and not his children’s childhood.

Therefore, when I read Blake’s “Nurses Song” it elicited somewhat of a motherly tone to it; like he’s writing from a mother’s perspective.  Before looking at the images and just reading the text, I imagined a mother speaking to her child and when I viewed the images, indeed, there was a mother and what looks to be two young people beneath her.

When Blake hears “the voices of children.  are heard on the green” he reminisces on his own childhood when he says, “The days of my youth are fresh in my mind” (2-4).  It is tangible and blatant that the sounds of children remind him of his youth but, following this he states, “My face turns green and pale” (5).  From this, memories of his childhood are obviously not pleasant.  Although the children are enjoying themselves and innocently playing outside, when he reflects on his own childhood, it does not elicit good memories.  Perhaps he was not given the same freedom that his own children have now.

As he is calling his children to come inside for the night, he describes the night as a “night in disguise” (6-9).  I can see this as a metaphor for growing up.  Your childhood is the purest and more fun years of your life, as the sun goes down and the night approaches, a new day is to follow.  If a new day is to follow, that means you are another day older and another day closer to adulthood.  Thus, the night is not just a time to alternate into the next day, though it is the beginning of a anew day, meaning you are becoming older.

I see this text as more of a reflection of his childhood and his own children remind him of his unpleasant childhood.  However, why is it called “Nurses Song”?  A nurse always provides care regardless of the circumstance; nurses tend to have a motherly essence.  Therefore, I think in many ways, regardless of Blake’s unfortunate childhood, he will still provide care to his children because he cares for them and only wants the best for them.  Rather he is speaking from experience in that he knows what a lousy childhood feels like and he does not want that for his children.

Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poem “Love and Sleep” depicts both sexual desire and BDSM in such a way that intertwines the context as being sexual and aggressive.  One could note that Swinburne is “lying asleep” and could be, perhaps, dreaming of his lover “leaning over [his] sad bed” (1-2).  If it weren’t a dream, he would be lying awake.  He continues to go into detail about his lover’s features such as “smooth-skinned and dark” and “perfect coloured” (4-6).

Swinburne’s choice of vocabulary reflects BDSM in that, he states, that her neck is looks good enough to bite (4).  In this respect, he is insinuating an aggressive sexual connection with his lover.  Within this time period, it was somewhat unusual to be aggressive in bed.  Sex was supposed to be passionate and emotional, not exactly aggressive.

What suggest sexual desire is depicted throughout the poem as a whole, however, he says “[his] soul desire” in the last line (14).  It is pretty interesting how Swinburne structured this poem.  From what I have read within the other texts that were given, I often noted that the writer was homosexual but Swinburne indicates that he is heterosexual, whom his lover is a woman.  This changed my perception of queerness in a way that allows be to think of queerness as more than just LGBTQ.  It allows me to think that queerness can be aggressively sexual and to have increasing desire for a person.  I find it interesting that, after reading some of my classmate’s blog posts, that writers of this time period found it extremely difficult to express their desires; whether it’d be for someone of the opposite or same sex.  I find many similarities in those quarrels with queerness in today’s generations.  Sexual aggression can be taken as rape or harassment OR it it could be taken as something pleasant.  In the same context, I can see that it is still difficult for people to come out and express their sexual preferences in the same ways these writers have found it difficult.