Essay about "The Clod and The Pebble"

“The Clod and The Pebble”

“The Clod and The Pebble” is a poem written by William Blake. It is about a Clod and a Pebble that talk about love and what they think about it. The poem presents two visions of love: in the one of the Clod, love is something positive and selfless, and, in the one of the Pebble, love is something negative and selfish.

The Clod presents love as something good and generous, that cares about you and tries to please you. It also says that love “And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.” That metaphor could mean that love makes things right when everything is wrong, that love can make feel good when you are feeling badly, that it can overcome everything. The Clod is something fragile and made of mud, what can symbolize that it is young and, because of that, has a more positive and optimistic idea of love.

The Pebble has a far more negative vision of love, one in which love is much more selfish: “Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight,” This is the exact opposite of the Clod’s vision. The Pebble thinks that love only wants to please itself and uses you to do that. It also says that it builds a Hell in Heaven, what signifies that love can make everything worse and can ruin every moment or person. The Pebble is a hard rock, and that could symbolize why it has a harsh vision of love.

In conclusion, the Clod sees the love as something completely positive and beneficiary, while the Pebble sees it as something negative and harmful. In my case I’m in the middle of both. I think the same as the Pebble when it says love can hurt you and is selfish, but when you are in love you stop caring about yourself and you care about the other.