The School Boy

"The School Boy" is a 1789 poem by William Blake and published as a part of his poetry collection entitled Songs of Experience. These poems were later added with Blake's Songs of Innocence to create the entire collection entitled "Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". This collection included poems such as "The Tyger", "The Little Boy Lost", "Infant Joy" and "The Shepherd". These poems are illustrated with colorful artwork created by Blake first in 1789.^[2] The first printing in 1789 consisted of sixteen copies.^[2] None of the copies of Songs of Innocence are exactly alike as some of them are incomplete or were colored in posthumously "in imitation of" other copies.^[2]

"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".^[3] 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.^[3] Meaning something that was born to be free and in nature, is instead trapped inside and made to be obedient.