# Little Boy Blue — Poetry character guide

> Little Boy Blue in Poetry by George MacDonald.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** little Boy Blue, Boy Blue, Boy

**First appearance:** 0042-little-elfie

## Snapshot

A nursery-rhyme child recruited into allegory, invoked as the poet rattles through a room of cryptic belongings and wonders at the baby who must be shown the homeward way.

## Who they are

He belongs to the poem's playful catalogue of wonders—the eight-day clock winding up the years, the baby whose broken verse and music snatches mark her as a seraph gone astray. The governing tension is between childish wonder and the hard lessons that must come: that to seem is not to be, that a pump is not a well, that book-appearance must burn. He matters to the arc because he embodies the collection's conviction that the heart must be kept while the brain changes, and that the smallest figures often carry the largest truths.

## In the story

### [He Heeded Not](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/chapters/he-heeded-not)

The small, pale-faced boy who silently buttons his drunken father's waistcoat, absorbed in loving care.

### [The Shadows](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/chapters/the-shadows)

The little boy with smooth cheeks and dreamy brown eyes who literally looks for God in the room and asks if God is the shadows.

### [Little Boy Blue](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/chapters/little-boy-blue)

The protagonist who commands nature but becomes overwhelmed by his own power, ultimately seeking his mother.

### [Master and Boy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/chapters/master-and-boy)

The child is the Shadow of Christmas-day, running after his Master.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/characters/little_boy_blue
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/characters