The Clod and The Pebble

   Hello everyone! Every week, I study a poet and some of his/her poetry in my school. This week, I wanted to write a little bit about a poem that I have been studying this week. It is called The Clod and The Pebble, by William Blake. 

       The Clod and The Pebble is a short poem written in iambic tetrameter. The poem addresses some of the world's biggest topics: love and bitterness. Blake starts the poem by saying:

'Love seeketh not Itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care;

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.'

So sung a little Clod of Clay,

Trodden with the cattle's feet;"

The original printing of
The Clod and The Pebble

       A clod of clay is a lump of soft, malleable clay, trodden, as Blake says, by the feet of cattle and animals. This clod obviously has suffered: he has been trampled, flattened, and squished by passers-by. Though he has been broken, he still has love. He is not hardened into hatred, but continually humbled and broken. Despite his suffering, he has joy! How can this be? 

       Sometimes, I think, we mistake an easy life to be equal to true joy. However, the two are quite different. Though having an easy life can make us happy, true joy only comes from God. How does he give us joy? Well, Ann Voskamp (author of The Broken Way) says that true joy only comes from being broken. To yield grain, the field must be plowed and broken. To yield wheat, the kernel must break open. To yield bread, the wheat must be ground and broken. Brokenness is a natural part of life, and we must accept it and become stronger. Just like the only way to build your muscles is to break them, so to build our love and peace, we must be broken. And out of that love and peace comes joy.

William Blake

The little clod has found the true meaning of happiness, the true meaning of love, by being broken.

"Maybe wholeness is embracing brokenness as a part of your life." 
-Voskamp

                           But a Pebble of the brook,

                               Warbled out these metres meet

                             'Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to Its delight
Joys in another's loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.'

       The pebble, hardened by the rocks of the brook, is blind to love. He does not understand what real love is, because he has not been broken. When we are broken, the true meaning of love becomes clearer. Love becomes about the other person, not about ourselves. It becomes about giving, not taking.

Who do we want to be: the clod, or the pebble?