Lyric Poem · Childhood
The Little Boy Lost
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“The Little Boy Lost” by William Blake — quilloak.com/poems/the-little-boy-lost
Quick facts
- Poem
- The Little Boy Lost
- Poet
- William Blake
- Length
- 8 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Short Poems
- Themes
- Childhood, Sad, Short
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 8 lines · 2 quatrains
- Line length
- Consistent with common metre. Alternating eight- and six-syllable lines — the hymn stanza (8.6.8.6), the most-used quatrain in English verse.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- William Blake1757–1827
- Source record
- PoetryDBThe Little Boy Lost by william-blake, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 9dc8cdb34a3b09bf…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.