Nurse’s Song
When voices of children are heard on the green,And laughing is heard on the hill,My heart is at rest within my breast,And everything else is still.
‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,And the dews of night arise;Come, come, leave off play, and let us away,Till the morning appears in the skies.’
‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,And we cannot go to sleep;Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,And the hills are all covered with sheep.’
‘Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,And then go home to bed.’The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laughed,And all the hills echoèd.
About this text
Nurse’s Song 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, Nurse’s Song, in Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789–1794), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1934, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/blake-songs/nurse-s-song.html, id L02884.
Form and metre
Nurse’s Song is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is anapaestic common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.8 syllables.
See other poems in anapaestic common measure.
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-A green · hillA · breast · stillA
- 2 -A-A down · ariseA · away · skiesA
- 3 -A-A day · sleepA · fly · sheepA
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 anapaestic common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When voices of children are heard on the green, | 11 | ·/˘·/˘····· |
| And laughing is heard on the hill, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| My heart is at rest within my breast, | 9 | ········· |
| And everything else is still. | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| ‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| And the dews of night arise; | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Come, come, leave off play, and let us away, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Till the morning appears in the skies.’ | 9 | ··/˘˘/··· |
| ‘No, no, let us play, for it is yet day, | 10 | ·········· |
| And we cannot go to sleep; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Besides, in the sky the little birds fly, | 10 | ˘/····/˘·· |
| And the hills are all covered with sheep.’ | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| ‘Well, well, go and play till the light fades away, | 11 | ·········˘/ |
| And then go home to bed.’ | 6 | ······ |
| The little ones leaped, and shouted, and laughed, | 10 | ·/˘···/˘·· |
| And all the hills echoèd. | 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.