A child wanders lost in a lonely marsh, following a flickering, unreliable light. Frightened, he starts to cry—but the poem immediately offers comfort. God, who is always near, appears looking just like his father, dressed in white. The figure kisses the boy, takes his hand, and leads him directly to his mother, who has been wandering pale with grief through the same desolate valley, searching for her weeping child.
The speaker’s tone is gently reassuring, as if telling a bedtime story where fear dissolves the moment it is named. The mood moves from quiet dread—the fen, the wandering light, the crying—into a sudden, tender rescue. Blake presents divine care as immediate and intimate, not distant or judgmental. The image of God as a second father, stepping in at the child’s lowest moment, makes the whole scene feel safe and strangely quiet, like a lullaby.