Let us answer to hate with our united love

William Blake was a poet, painter, printmaker and visionary in the 18th century. Throughout his life his poems and paintings express a notion of universal humanity, abhorring any form of racism or other -isms.

In the poem “The Little Black Boy” I found these lines especially meaningful:

“And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy”

Let us all stand up together against any form of racism, let the anger we feel give us strength to building up something new, something better, let us all stand united against the forces which want to divide us and respond to any hate with our united love.
We are all one human family!
With love, Angi

The Little Black Boy by WILLIAM BLAKE

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav’d of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.