"The Little Girl Found" is a poem written by the English poet

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...

. It was published as part of his collection ''

Songs of Experience ''Songs of Innocence and of Experience'' is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases: a few first copies were printed and illuminated by Blake himself in 1789; five years later, he bound these poems with a ...

'' in 1794. In the poem, the parents of a seven-year-old girl, called Lyca, are looking desperately for their young daughter who is lost in the desert. During days and nights they go on looking for the girl up to the moment they find a lion which tells them where the child lies.

The poem

The poem begins with a girl's parents searching for her: At last, a spirit guides them to her:

Analysis

As a resolution to "

The Little Girl Lost The Little Girl Lost is a 1794 poem published by William Blake in his collection ''Songs of Innocence and of Experience''. According to scholar, Grevel Lindop, this poem represents Blake's pattern of the transition between "the spontaneous, i ...

", this poem shows the fulfilling of Blake's image of the 'desert wild become a garden mild'; the parents' perceptions of nature have changed, and they no longer fear their natural surroundings. Blake uses this to demonstrate that positive change away from corrupt experience is possible, but only through an acceptance of that which is natural. Crucially, this poem gives hope in the surrounding bleak view of ''

'', and is an effective example of a retreat into nature to learn and develop, an important motif in

pastoral A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts ...

literature.

References

1794 poems Songs of Innocence and of Experience {{poem-stub