William Blake's 'Circle of Life'

   Along with an apparent need for balance and perhaps some evidence of apparent insanity, one of Blake's recurring themes that stand out the most, at least personally, is his repeated portrayal of life and its stages as being cyclical. In the image on plate six, we can see representations of the usual three stages of life (youth, adulthood, and old age) literally grouped in a circle around the trunk of a tall, protective tree. We also see these three stages in plate thirty eight, which also shows the second version of "A Nurse's Song." We see the figure of a young, perhaps adolescent, child closely followed by its adult caretaker. At the rear of these figures crouches what appears to be an old woman, apparently feeble and or senile.  The way in which these figures are positioned creates the vague shape of a circle, further signifying the infinite cycle of life and its respective stages.