'I love to rise in a summer morn,

When the birds sing on every tree;

The distant huntsman winds his horn,

O what sweet company!

Which poem are these lines taken from? Who wrote this poem? What is the tone of the poem?

• Marks=2.5

"The School Boy" is a 1789 poem by William Blake

Tone::

The presentation of innocence as freedom from constraint and self- consciousness is the main theme of the poem. Here the child starts out taking pleasure in an uninhibited life, full of trust in his world, both natural and human. The fragility of this state is clear from images as blossoms' and tender plants are stripped. The child soon experiences the 'woe' in life leading to failure and betrayal.