Blake: Findings in 'A Little Girl Lost'

Abstract

THE virgin ‘Ona’, mentioned in line 30 in William Blake's ‘A Little Girl Lost’ in Songs of Experience, issued in 1794, is prevented from dalliance by her ‘father white’, a restrictive holy parent who shakes the ‘blossoms’ of his ‘hoary hair’ (E 29),1 blossoms nipped in the bud by the wintry frost of a Fallen Age (seasons precipitated by the tilt of the Zodiac).2 Thus, confronted with such demanding Morality, Ona's ‘tender limbs with terror shook’ in ‘trembling fear’.3 Accordingly, Blake's Ona as a Little Girl Lost has a tragic afterlife in Blakean perspective. In The Four Zoas (VII.79:20–37, E 355) this unfulfilled maiden becomes one of the chaste moon-daughters of satanic Urizen.4 In such an allegorical equation, Ona is instrumental in forming manna, described as dewy ‘hoar frost’ in Exodus (16:14–15)—the divine Bread rained from heaven, an ingredient that miraculously nourished the Israelites...