"The Clod and the Pebble" by William Blake

“The Clod and the Pebble” is a curious poem written by William Blake. It starts out with a description of love in the way that one would normally expect. It describes love as this selfless being who “seeketh not Itself to please.” Because “for another gives its ease,” Love “builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.” Basically, love permanently tips the balance in favor of life on Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” scale, which for Hamlet is dangerously tipped toward death. After a puzzling median set apart from the first and last stanzas, the image of Love is repeated with meticulous parallelism by a dissident pebble. The antiparallel third stanza replaces seeking “not Itself” for pleasure with “only Self,” switches “nor for itself hath any care” for “to bind another to its delight.” In the final line, this second image of Love causes Hell in the midst of Heaven. We learn that the “Clod of Clay” believes the former noble image of love while a “Pebble of the brook” believes the latter version. The significance of the clay may be that “trodden” by cattle probably along a road, it lays down its life into the dust for the comfort of the feet of others. The pebble, however, living in the beautiful comfort of his brook sees the clay’s position as undesirable and, given the opportunity, would try to “love” others by making them serve him. This analogy can be drawn so that the clay intersects the position of a common peasant with “true love” and the pebble the position of a noble with “false love.” A better explanation for the choice of pebble and clay may in fact be a reference to the Biblical and literary idea of having either a heart of clay that can be molded to Christ’s purposes and be merciful as compared to the heart of stone. In does indeed seem reasonable that the heart of soft moldable clay would have this first picture of “true love” while the hard and cold pebble in a stream would have a steely image of love as one of the tools of manipulation and evil. Since there is no explanation as to what is really love, we are left to wonder whether love really is as good as we make it out to be. Since most people will come to the conclusion that love must truly be the first stanza, the central purpose of the poem is to enhance the true meaning of love to the reader. The poem does this well by making us revile the latter false picture. Many readers will cling to the first image as I did by rereading it to remove the bad taste left in their mouth when they get to the end. Another curious feature of this poem is that the positive picture of love is framed by somewhat negative terms: “care, Hell’s despair.” The negative picture of love has positive words: “delight,” “Joys,” “Heaven.” This forces the reader to wonder why the first image of love is better? The author’s emphasis of the supernatural by ending each picture of love with references to “Heaven” and “Hell” signifies that without a spiritual explanation, there is no valid reason for us to settle on the first image of love.