Rhyme And Rythm in Blakes A Divine Image Essay - 822 Words

Rhyme And Rythm in Blakes A Divine Image In A Divine Image, Blake uses several techniques and literary devices, to transmit his thoughts about social injustice, cruelty and human nature, Rhyme and rhythm are two of the main features in this poem this poem is the rhythm affect the whole mood, tone and meaning of the poem. The poet has chosen different methods to give the poem specific sounds that affect the pace and structure of the rhythm. The structure of the first stanza helps us understand the relationships between the four aspects of human nature presented, cruelty, jealousy, terror and secrecy. The first and third lines start with the main word, while in the second and fourth ones the words come preceded by the word And.†¦show more content†¦On a deeper level, this way of structuring can represent the inflexibility and stiffness of these negative human aspects, like immovable objects buried deep inside human nature. We can see that the most outstanding rhythmical feature of this stanza is foregrounding. In fact, every line of the poem has the word human in it. This excessive repetitiveness, together with the characteristics described, leads the reader to render them exclusively human, the result of our intellectual superiority over nature. The stress of the lines fall in the word human in every case in the second stanza, achieved by the foregrounding device. The repetition of the consonant sounds plays a very important part in the rhythm of the second stanza. We notice that the consonant sound most frequently repeated is the f sound, a sharp and keen one, for example in ? is forged iron, ?form a fiery forge or ?face a furnace sealed. This repetitiveness of the f sound together with the image of a furnace and iron being forged, suggests a very strong image of fire that affects the tone and mood of the poem. The climax of this image is achieved in the third lines when the image of the furnace is presented. Interestingly enough we can find juxtaposition of the words face and furnace as these dont usually go together, for the heat of a furnace would burn someones face. This suggests the somewhat chaotic human nature referring to jealousy.