Night

William Blake’s “Night” presents an uncommonly positive picture of night. Normally a time of day associated with fear, danger, and obscuring darkness, Blake reimagines night as a liminal (in-between) space where the spiritual and material come into contact. The main thing preventing night from manifesting its negative qualities is a kind of religious grace. This grace is represented through the symbolic light or brightness that protects humanity and other creatures from the dangers inherent in darkness. Blake represents this light through the figures of the angel and the lion, both of which carry a rich history of religious associations (See: Symbols & Motifs). For the speaker, these figures demonstrate how religious belief can shield one from danger and how earthly suffering can transmute into a rich afterlife.

Despite the poem’s positive message about night, the work still contains suggestions of its dangers. The poem opens with the speaker stating that they “must seek” (Line 4) for their nest. The word “must” implies that this retreat to a safe place to sleep is necessary, and the word “seek” suggests the difficulty of seeing that makes dark night dangerous. The second stanza develops this sense of danger by saying, “[f]arewell [to] green fields and happy grove” (Line 9). These places are no longer distinguishable in the night, and qualities like “green” or “happy” become obscured. The speaker expresses the “delight” (Line 10) the flocks took in the fields in the past tense, suggesting that they feel different, more negative emotions during the night. The speaker also continually evokes the possibility of animals “weeping” (Line 21), further reinforcing the night’s negative qualities.

These negative qualities, however, are mitigated by the presence of “angels bright” (Line 12). Though the angels are “Unseen” (Line 13), their brightness casts off many of the negative aspects of night in the same way it can eliminate its darkness. The angels prevent the animals from “weeping” (Line 21) by “pour[ing] blessing / And joy” (Lines 13-14) onto all plants and sleeping animals. The angels also “pour sleep on [the] head” (Line 23) of any creature unable to sleep out of fear or despair “[a]nd sit down by their bed” (Line 24). In this way, the angels serve to protect all life from danger and negative emotions. The creature’s nests and “fold[s]” (Line 48), or enclosures, act as a physical barrier from the dangers of the night. The angels, and the light and emotional satiation they bring, act as a spiritual barrier from these same dangers.

The angels also guard “every beast” (Line 19), including predators that normally hunt at night. The angels attempt to “drive [the predator’s] thirst away / And keep them from the sheep” (Lines 27-28). The angels, however, are aware that the cycle of life must continue. They do not protect the sheep’s bodies, but their spirits, and they stand ready to “[r]eceive each mild spirit” (Line 31) into the afterlife.

The lion serves similar protective functions to the angels. He, however, is a figure of the “New worlds” (Line 32), where he presides over and protects the animals during their afterlife. Like the “angels bright” (Line 12), the lion’s “bright mane” (Line 46) fends off the night’s darkness. The lion patrols “round the fold” (Line 36), empathizing with the other animals in the enclosure. Fold, in this context, also refers to a religious society and its congregates. The lion acts as spiritual shepherd to the sheep and lambs in the enclosure, much in the same way Christ acts as a shepherd to humanity in Christian theology (See: Symbols & Motifs). In the lion’s new world, the animal’s tears and suffering are transmuted into “tears of gold” (Line 34) as the lion takes on their “tender cries” (Line 35) through acts of pity. Any suffering that the angels were unable to prevent is turned into riches that “[s]hall shine like” (Line 47) the lion’s bright mane. The lion’s tears and mane, the poem suggests, become like a halo or a second sun.

Neither the lion nor the angels completely undo the dangers of night. Their light co-mingles with the darkness as a necessary opposite much in the same way the predatory lion and the prey lamb “lie down” (Line 42) beside one another at the poem’s end. Day and night represent to aspects of time in the same way predators and prey represent two aspects of living creatures, and in neither case can one exist without the other. The protection the angels provide comes through the form of grace, or the favor of God amid difficult circumstances. The lion, likewise, is only able to protect those that have already passed into the “New worlds” (Line 32) of the afterlife. Without these difficulties and the possibility of death, the poem argues, there would be no possibility for a rich afterlife where sorrows transmute into “tears of gold” (Line 34).