Punctuation In The Nurse's Song

Upon first reading, punctuation in poetry does not much inform readers’ interpretations. However, when analyzing a poem, punctuation can entirely change the meaning that each reader finds. “The Nurse’s Song,” by William Blake, is one such example of this phenomenon. In different printings of “The Nurse’s Song,” the punctuation changes slightly, and this changes readers’ understanding of the poem. One example of this is the addition of an accent mark that occasionally appears over the second “e” in the word “ecchoed” in the fourth stanza of the poem. Another example of this is the quotation marks that are sometimes found in the second, third, and fourth stanzas. In addition to an accent and quotation marks, some printings of this poem include punctuation marks that separate lines, such as periods and semicolons (David, 48). While these may seem like minor changes, even something so small as an accent mark can make a difference in interpretation and understanding. William Blake, having trained as an engraver for seven years, printed his own poems (Phillips), which created small differences in printings of the same poem. In an image of an original print of “The Nurse’s

Without these quotation marks, it is not immediately apparent that those lines are meant to be spoken, which indicates that the marks are added for easier comprehension. The first stanza of the poem appears to be the thoughts of the nurse as she watches the children play, and the second stanza could be interpreted as a continuation of her thoughts, as in The Longman Anthology of British Literature (116), which does not include the quotation marks. As there is not any portion of the original printed illustration that could be interpreted as quotation marks, it seems likely that some literary anthologies add the marks to aid their