From Blake’s Songs of Innocence, published in 1794, this was one of the series of poems which present an idealised world, in contrast to the harsh realities of late 18th and early 19th Century life during the time of King George III, known — ironically given the terrible social conditions of the time — as the Romantic Era. Each poem in the “Songs of Innocence” category is matched by a grim portrayal in Songs of Experience. The contrast is Blake’s method of social protest.

‘A Dream’ portrays a caring parent, who is lost, empathises with her lonely offspring and tries to actively seek them. It is in traditional fable form, in which an anthropomorphised creature, an ant (emmet) ‘speaks’ and tells a tale with a moral.

The poem is unusual in that it inverts the traditional portrayal of mother and offspring at home anxiously awaiting an absent father. Here, it is a lost mother, in the guise of an ant, who is desperate to find her way home. It represents the ideal of familial love.

The role of the mother figure is similar to that in the ‘Little Boy’ poems. The resolution, a happy ending, requires the child and mother to be reunited. Other creatures are sympathetic and helpful, an idealised depiction of universal empathy. Of course, it is a fantasy; Blake was aware of the cruel reality of life for poor people in the time in which he lived. Interestingly, the father can do nothing to assist — here he sits at home and ‘sigh’s — and it is for God to intervene and restore the maternal relationship.

Structure
The poem comprises five four-lined stanzas, quatrains, made up of rhyming couplets. Some of the rhymes are cpmspmamt, as in ‘hum’ and ‘home’ in the last stanza. These help to break up what might otherwise be an over-regular pattern. This is a typical Blake structure, creating a child-like mood, appropriate to a fable.

Language and Imagery
The most noticeable feature of this poem is the fact that it is a fable, with anthropomorphised creatures speaking their fears and worries. But in the opening stanza it is the speaker, maybe the poet, who begins the story in the first person singular ‘I’. The ant then intervenes to tell of her plight, and the speaker returns briefly, but then the ‘glow-worm’ provides the conclusion.

Throughout the language is simple and accessible.