Infant Joy
‘I have no name;I am but two days old.’What shall I call thee?‘I happy am,Joy is my name.’Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!Sweet joy, but two days old.Sweet joy I call thee:Thou dost smile,I sing the while;Sweet joy befall thee!
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Infant Joy is in the public domain. This text is taken from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Project Gutenberg ebook #1934; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Blake, Infant Joy, in Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789–1794), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1934, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/blake-songs/infant-joy.html, id L02885.
Form and metre
Infant Joy is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 4.5 syllables.
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 A-B-AB nameA · old · theeB · am · nameA · theeB
- 2 --ABBA joy · old · theeA · smileB · whileB · theeA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| ‘I have no name; | 4 | ···· |
| I am but two days old.’ | 6 | ······ |
| What shall I call thee? | 5 | ····· |
| ‘I happy am, | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Joy is my name.’ | 4 | ···· |
| Sweet joy befall thee! | 5 | ··˘/· |
| Pretty joy! | 3 | /˘· |
| Sweet joy, but two days old. | 6 | ······ |
| Sweet joy I call thee: | 5 | ····· |
| Thou dost smile, | 3 | ··· |
| I sing the while; | 4 | ···· |
| Sweet joy befall thee! | 5 | ··˘/· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.