Blake begins with a series of questions that feel almost rhetorical: can we really witness another person’s pain and not be moved to help? The poem travels from our own instinctive sympathy to the protective love of parents, then makes a leap: if human love is this responsive, surely the creator of all life must feel it too. The speaker’s tone is earnest and tender, never preachy. He insists, with a childlike certainty, that God doesn’t just watch our suffering from afar—He becomes a child, becomes a man of sorrow, and weeps alongside us. The repeated “Never, never can it be!” gives the poem a lulling, hymn-like quality. The mood is deeply comforting: no grief goes unnoticed, no tear falls unseen. It’s a vision of the world where compassion binds everything together, from a parent’s quick response to an infant’s cry all the way up to a divine presence that sits beside us, sharing our grief until it passes.
On Another's Sorrow — Summary
Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear, And not feel my sorrow's share? Can a father see his child Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hear An infant groan, an infant fear? No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!
And can He who smiles on all Hear the wren with sorrows small, Hear the small bird's grief and care, Hear the woes that infants bear--
And not sit beside the next, Pouring pity in their breast, And not sit the cradle near, Weeping tear on infant's tear?
And not sit both night and day, Wiping all our tears away? Oh no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!
He doth give his joy to all: He becomes an infant small, He becomes a man of woe, He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh, And thy Maker is not by: Think not thou canst weep a tear, And thy Maker is not near.
Oh He gives to us his joy, That our grief He may destroy: Till our grief is fled an gone He doth sit by us and moan.