"Witless woe was ne'er beguiled"

[Morten Bo Johansen]

[ Let us see if someone is still here ... ]

"The Angel", a poem by William Blake, goes like this

I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe was ne'er beguiled!

And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart's delight.

So he took his wings, and fled;
Then the morn blushed rosy red.
I dried my tears, and armed my fears
With ten-thousand shields and spears.

Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.

I have a problem understanding the use of "beguiled" in the
line, "witless woe was ne'er beguiled"

If "beguiled" is used as an adjective, it means enthralled,
captivated, etc. If used as a verb, it means to delude,
ensnare, deceive, etc.

Here it is used as a verb and therefore it should have a
negative connotation, but it has the opposite?

Thanks,
Morten

[John Hall]

In message <slrnunm6lf....@localhost.localdomain>, Morten Bo
Johansen <mort...@hotmail.com> writes

>[ Let us see if someone is still here ... ]
>
>"The Angel", a poem by William Blake, goes like this
>
> I dreamt a dream! What can it mean?
> And that I was a maiden Queen
> Guarded by an Angel mild:
> Witless woe was ne'er beguiled!
>
> And I wept both night and day,
> And he wiped my tears away;
> And I wept both day and night,
> And hid from him my heart's delight.
>
> So he took his wings, and fled;
> Then the morn blushed rosy red.
> I dried my tears, and armed my fears
> With ten-thousand shields and spears.
>
> Soon my Angel came again;
> I was armed, he came in vain;
> For the time of youth was fled,
> And grey hairs were on my head.
>
>I have a problem understanding the use of "beguiled" in the
>line, "witless woe was ne'er beguiled"

I confess that I have a problem understanding the whole poem from
beginning to end! Even by Blake's standards, it seems obscure.

>
>If "beguiled" is used as an adjective, it means enthralled,
>captivated, etc. If used as a verb, it means to delude,
>ensnare, deceive, etc.
>
>Here it is used as a verb and therefore it should have a
>negative connotation, but it has the opposite?
>

Maybe the word's meaning has changed in the 200 or more years since the
poem was written?
--
John Hall
"Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people
from coughing."
Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-83)

[Morten Bo Johansen]

On 2023-12-14 John Hall wrote:

> Maybe the word's meaning has changed in the 200 or more years since the
> poem was written?

I also pondered that. According to Oxford Advanced Learner's
Dictionary, the origin of the word is:

Middle English (in the sense ‘deceive, deprive of by fraud’):
from be- ‘thoroughly’ + obsolete guile ‘to deceive’ (from Old
French, probably from Old Norse).

So it seems that the word is around a 1000 years old with this
meaning?

Morten

[John Hall]

In message <slrnunmeu5.1...@localhost.localdomain>, Morten Bo
Johansen <mort...@hotmail.com> writes

It's always possible that it acquired a more favourable second meaning
for a while, before reverting wholly to the original meaning. Or maybe
Blake just used it incorrectly. I believe Browning famously badly
misunderstood the meaning of a word that he used in one of his poems,
though I can no longer remember what the word was.

[billy bookcase]

"Morten Bo Johansen" <mort...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:slrnunm6lf....@localhost.localdomain...

Maybe the point is, that the person being beguiled enjoys
the experience - positive

Whereas the person doing the beguiling may be doing so
for questionable motives - negative

As a native English speaker of over 70 years and an avid
reader I must nevertheless admit I was forced to look online
for a possible interpretation of this poem.

On one interpretation the Angel represents childhood innocence.

And its subsequent loss

Maybe a good substitute for this might be Father Christmas/Santa Claus.

Thus parents beguile (delude, ensnare) their children into
believing in Father Christmas allowing the children to
be beguiled (captivated) into thinking he's going to come
down the chimney and leave presents at the bottom of their
bed.

Same action but viewed from a different perspective.

Myself I'm having a lot more trouble with "witless woe"

And also "And hid from him my heart's delight

As the latter would seem to imply that the child positively
"enjoys" losing their childhood innocence. Rather than being
forced to abandon it say, when first discovering the "truth"
about Father Christmas.


bb

[Morten Bo Johansen]

I am not a native English speaker myself (Danish), but the
overall gist of the poem was always easy to understand (for
me): It is, as you write, about the loss of innocence. Indeed,
the collection of poems it belongs to is entitled "Songs of
Experience". But the particular line I referenced is difficult
to understand, because the overall meaning of it obviously
seems like something positive ("witless woe was never an
issue") and yet you have these three negations - "witless woe"
has a negative meaning, "never" is a negation and "beguiled"
has a negative meaning - and multiplying three negatives yields
a negative, giving the whole sentence a negative meaning when
it should have the opposite?

The "hid from him my heart's delight" line, I understand as the
narrator not giving fully in to his feelings: He cries to be
sure, but yet holds part of his emotions back from the Angel and
therefore the Angel punishes him by fleeing. Perhaps the larger
meaning is one of religious devotion: You must surrender yourself
completely to God in order to obtain Bliss. 90% is not enough.

Morten