The Echoing The
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The Echoing Green
Summary
The poem The Echoing Green (originally Ecchoing Green) by William
Blake is written in the appreciation of nature in simple terms. However,
if we go deep into it, we will find the theme of life and death in the world.
The poem is told by a young child who is playing in the “Echoing Green”
park.
The poem has been divided into three stanzas which if we go deep,
depict the three stages of life. Each stanza is divided into 10 lines and the
rhyme scheme is AABB. Another interesting thing worth noticing is that
the first two stanzas end in “On the Ecchoing Green” while the final
stanza ends in “On the darkening Green”. We will discuss this in the end
Stanza 1
The poet says that the sun rises and makes the skies happy i.e. when the
sun arises, light spreads across the sky making it look beautiful and
fresh. Next, he says that the merry bells ring to welcome the Spring.
‘Merry Bells’ probably refer to the Church Bells which ring in the
morning. They are merry because they welcome the beautiful morning of
spring.
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The sky-lark and thrush and the birds of the bush sing louder around
to the bells’ cheerful sound. Skylark and thrush fly high in the air while
the birds of bush like sparrows remain near the ground. Thus according
to the poet, all the birds also sing in the spring morning loudly which
adds to the joyful sound of bells.
In simple words, the chirping of all the birds and the ringing of bell
welcome the spring. In the next line, the poet says that while all these
things are going on, their sports are going on the ecchoing green.
For the first time, in the poem, we come to know that the speaker is a
child who is playing with others in the green park which is echoing. Echo
means a reflection of sound. But here echo symbolises the cycle of
life because all this happens every morning and keeps repeating.
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Stanza 2
The child says that Old John, with white hair laughs away care. ‘Old
John’ simply refers to an old man and ‘white hair’ depict his final years of
life. Laugh away means forgetting the problems of life by being happy
and laughing. ‘Care’ here means the thoughts of being old and fear of
death.
Thus the lines mean that John, who is an old man with grey hair is also in
the park and is laughing without caring about his old age and
approaching death. Note that in the previous stanza, the children are too
playing but don’t know about death or old age experiences. Hence they
are innocent while this old man knows about all this but ignores them by
laughing.
He is sitting under the oak tree along with other old people. The oak
tree here not only means a tree in the park but also strength and
longevity, and shelter for the old men. It is also a symbol of experience
like old men. There are other old men as well. All of them laugh
at the play of children. This is the laugh which we find in the first line of
this stanza.
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Seeing the children playing, they start memorising about their
own youth-time. Like the children, they too used to enjoy when they
were young on the ecchoing green. As described earlier, here ecchoing
green refers to the cycle of life.
Earlier it was the old men who used to enjoy and now that they are old,
their place is taken by the new children and this cycle will continue for
eternity.
Stanza 3
The children get tired and no one can enjoy. It is the time when the
sun is about to descend i.e. darkness is about to come. All of the children
stop playing and go back to home. They (brothers and sisters) sit in the
laps of their mothers like the bird chicks flock around their mother in
the nest.
