What Kind of Lover Are You? This Poem Might Have the Answer.

William Blake’s “The Clod & the Pebble” is a dialogue on tenderness and cruelty in three short stanzas. Read it with our critic A.O. Scott, and then play a game to memorize it.

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Isabella Cotier

By A.O. Scott and Aliza Aufrichtig

A.O. Scott is a critic at large for the Book Review. Aliza Aufrichtig is a visual journalist.

Jan. 16, 2026

Not every poem about love is a love poem. This one, from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” first published in 1794, is more analytical than romantic. Instead of roses and violets, it offers us dirt and rocks.

The   CLOD   &   the   PEBBLE  

by   William   Blake  

Love   seeketh   not   Itself   to   please ,  

Nor   for   itself   hath   any   care ;