The Clod and the Pebble

"The Clod and the Pebble" is a poem from William Blake's 1794 collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Love seeketh not Itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.

So sang a little Clod of Clay, Trodden with the cattles feet: But a Pebble of the brook, Warbled out these metres meet.

[1] "The Clod and the Pebble" is the exemplification of Blake's statement at the beginning of Songs of Innocence and of Experience that it is the definition of the "Contrary States of the Human Soul".

Also according to Joseph Heffner the use of the word "bind" by the pebble "suggests a sort of aggressive, violent and masculine view of love".

[2] The last stanza of the poem, the pebble's view of selfish love, was used as the epigraph for Evelyn Scott's 1921 novel The Narrow House.