Demo Edition

The following is the edition of my poem. Feel free to hover over the highlighted elements to see how my choice in what to present has been influenced by each of the three editions, as well as my analysis of which alterations add or detract from the poem in terms of clarifying its meaning.

        The Clod & the Pebble

“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.
        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 Different Editions

When tracing back (mostly uncredited and unsourced) variants of the poem on the internet, it seems that they all really only represented two editions of the poem that were being copy-pasted around. There was the original 1794 edition of the poem that Blake printed (the facsimile of which I have provided below, copied from The Blake Archive), and a seemingly modernised one.

After much searching, it seemed the most credible authority to be using the ‘modernised’ edition to represent the poem in their analyses was the Poetry Foundation. While they cite Blake’s original edition or a facsimile thereof as their source for copying the poem, the variants of their edition are too numerous to simply be a copy. I feel there must have been an editorial hand involved in potentially ‘modernising’ Blake for a new audience, either at the level of the Poetry Foundation or an intervening source I cannot find.

Another source I found most interesting was the entry on Project Gutenberg, which parallelly lists a digitised copy of the poem and a facsimile of the original Blake edition. However, when juxtaposed like that, it is blatantly obvious that the Project Gutenberg edition introduces major changes to the presentation of the poem. There are also no paratexts indicating that these modifications are copied from another source, which leads me to once again suspect that it’s the work of the webpage’s creators — in this case the Project Gutenberg folk.

If you would be interested in combing through the three editions side-by-side for differences, I have reproduced them here:

Original EditionPoetry Foundation EditionProject Gutenberg Edition

⠀⠀⠀The CLOD & the PEBBLE

Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease.
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair,

⠀⠀⠀So sung a little Clod of Clay,
⠀⠀⠀Trodden with the cattles feet:
⠀⠀⠀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 anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.		The Clod and the Pebble
BY WILLIAM BLAKE

“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,
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 CLOD AND THE PEBBLE

‘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,
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.’
Comparing the Editions side by side.