The Shepherd

by William Blake

A complete poem from Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Original wording and verse line breaks are preserved.

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Poetry Classic literature Songs of Innocence and of Experience

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01The Shepherd~1 min

A little about this reading

William Blake describes a shepherd attending to his flock through the day. Its brief lines and repeated sounds offer a quiet introduction to listening closely to a poem.

Read the lines as verse and notice the words associated with care, watchfulness and peace.

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About this edition

Text source: Project Gutenberg
Author: William Blake
Language: English
Text rights: Public domain — original text
Credit: William Blake, “The Shepherd”, from Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Original public-domain poem; source Project Gutenberg #1934. This historical edition’s wording is retained. Surrounding anthology, editorial material and illustrations omitted; text reformatted for reading. Source metadata identifies public domain in the USA.

Source and reading notes

This reading edition keeps the source text available in sections. AI narration is generated by iReadAll and is not a recording of the author.

Cover artwork and typography are created by iReadAll; they are not the original publication’s illustrations. Refer to the source for the original publication and its illustrations.

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