William Blake

The Little Girl Lost

Transcription (not listed in original)
The Little Girl Lost.

Prophetic framing

Blake begins with a vision of future redemption, not present reality. The earth will 'seek / For her maker meek'—this inverts the usual religious hierarchy where the maker seeks the lost.

In futurity
I prophetic see,
That the earth from sleep,
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise and seek
For her maker meek;
And the desart wild
Become a garden mild.
In the southern clime,
Where the summers prime,
Never fades away;
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old

Lyca's age and innocence

Seven years old is significant—Blake frequently uses this age to mark the boundary between innocence and experience. She's old enough to wander alone but young enough to be utterly vulnerable.

Lovely Lyca told,
She had wanderd long,
Hearing wild birds song.
Sweet sleep come to me
Underneath this tree;
Do father, mother weep,—
Where can Lyca sleep.

Desart as spiritual space

Blake spells it 'desart' (not desert), an archaic form. The wilderness is where innocence encounters predatory nature—but also where transformation happens. It's liminal space, not just danger.

Lost in desart wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep,
If her mother weep.
If her heart does ake,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,

Emotional logic, not reason

Lyca's reasoning is circular and magical: if her parents sleep, she won't weep. She's not solving the problem of being lost—she's trying to control her parents' emotions through her own sleep. This is how children think, not how adults solve problems.

Lyca shall not weep.
Frowning frowning night,
O'er this desart bright,
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.
Sleeping Lyca lay;
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
View'd the maid asleep
The kingly lion stood
And the virgin view'd,

Predators as gentle

The lions 'gambold' (gambol—play) and the lioness 'loos'd her slender dress' before conveying her to caves. Blake presents the dangerous animals with tenderness and almost erotic care. This is the poem's most unsettling move.

Then he gambold round
O'er the hallowd ground:

Hallowed ground

The lion plays on 'hallowd ground'—sacred earth. Blake sanctifies the space where the child sleeps among predators. The wilderness isn't profane; it's blessed.

Leopards, tygers play,
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old,
Bow'd his mane of gold,
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,

Tears from 'eyes of flame'

The lion weeps 'ruby tears'—precious, glowing. This contradicts the predator logic. The beasts aren't attacking; they're responding to her with something like compassion or recognition.

From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came;
While the lioness,
Loos'd her slender dress,
And naked they convey'd

The abduction ending

The poem ends with the animals carrying the sleeping child 'to caves'—not killing her, but taking her somewhere. Blake leaves the outcome ambiguous. This isn't rescue or death; it's something else.

To caves the sleeping maid.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Blake's ambiguous rescue: why the beasts are gentle

This poem appears in Blake's *Songs of Innocence and Experience* (1789), paired with a darker companion poem, 'The Little Girl Found.' Together they explore what happens when innocence encounters the predatory natural world. But Blake refuses simple morality: the beasts that find Lyca don't devour her. Instead, they weep, play, and carry her to safety—or somewhere. The poem's power lies in this refusal to clarify.

Blake was writing during the Romantic period's obsession with nature as both redemptive and dangerous. But unlike Wordsworth, who trusted nature to restore innocence, Blake shows nature as genuinely other—neither wholly protective nor wholly predatory. The lions' 'ruby tears' and the lioness loosing her dress suggest maternal care, but also something stranger: a recognition between different forms of life that transcends human morality.

The key is Lyca's passivity. She doesn't escape or resist; she sleeps. Blake suggests that innocence survives not through vigilance or reason, but through surrender—through trusting a world that operates by its own logic, not human sentiment. The 'desart wild' becomes a garden not because humans restore it, but because Lyca's presence transforms it. This is Blake's vision of redemption: not rescue, but metamorphosis.

The emotional magic of a child's logic

Notice how Lyca speaks: in rhyming couplets, in circular reasoning, in magical thinking. When she says 'If my mother sleep, / Lyca shall not weep,' she's not making a logical argument—she's casting a spell. Blake captures the precise texture of how children experience separation: not as a problem to solve, but as an emotional state to manage through will and imagination.

This matters because it changes how we read the ending. Lyca doesn't resist the beasts because she's asleep and trusting—but also because, in her child's logic, if she can just sleep, the problem dissolves. Blake validates this as a kind of wisdom rather than dismissing it as delusion. The poem suggests that the child's emotional truth (if I sleep, my mother won't suffer) might actually work in a world that operates by different rules than adult reason. The beasts respond to her not with predatory hunger but with recognition of that truth.