Merrily, Merrily -- A Visual Annotation of William Blake's "Spring"

by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com

---

The beauty of Blake's "Spring" from Songs of Innocence is due not only to the gorgeous visual canvas that accompanies the poem, but the language itself. Its desire to embrace the season of rebirth and renewal always calls to mind for me e. e. cummings "In Just-," especially the segment below: 

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

There is some of this whimsy in the visual brainstorming that Dillon put together below. Why not, for instance, create a little crossword with Blake's name and the title of the poem? It's a cool idea in keeping with the spirit of the poem:

---

---

One particular literary feature that Dillon quite correctly points out is that repetition of the line "Merrily, merrily, we welcome in the year."

---

---

We can see that the repetition of the line does indeed, as Dillon points out, emphasize the speaker's love for spring. Students and teachers of literature might be further interested to know that there is another device at work here. "Merrily, merrily" is a figure of repetition known as epizeuxis, which is the repeating of a word two or more times without intervening words. When used in this context with the adverb "Merrily" is simply reinforces the idea of embracing the springtime...


...And that, I think, is important to remember as we head into Winter!

---

If you're interested in this post, you might also be interested in the following:

• Comics in Education Presents: Shakespeare's Career as a Playwright
  
• Show Me What You're Thinking... Okay. Done.
• This is Why We Should Teach Kids to Cross Out and Not Erase
  
• A Visual Annotation of Sylvia Plath's "Morning Song"
  
• Brainstorming Visual Media, Part 1
  
• Visual Brainstorming Series: Names and Naming in Jekyll and Hyde
  
• Visual Brainstorming and Othello, or Are Iago and the Joker really all that alike?