William Blake - Songs of Innocence and Experience - The Echoing Green : Relation to ideas

The Sun does arise,
And make happy the skies.
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring.
The sky-lark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around,
To the bells cheerful sound.
While our sports shall be seen
On the Echoing Green.

Old John with white hair
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk,
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say.
Such, such were the joys,
When we all, girls & boys,
In our youth time were seen,
On the Echoing Green.

Till the little ones weary
No more can be merry
The sun does descend,
And our sports have an end:
Round the laps of their mothers,
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest:
And sport no more seen,
On the darkening Green.

This is a poem that I studied at A-level for English Literature, and I feel that it again has relevance in relation to my book project. It's overriding theme is the impermanence of youth versus the endurance of nature, which is something I want to explore through the narrative of my book.
Each stanza works as a representation of different stages of life, all set against the backdrop of a Spring day. The first is the vibrance of youth and the excitement of being out in the world, while the second moves into a retrospective view of the spring, where the 'old folk' are still happy because the children's joy reminds them of their own youth. The final stanza explores the idea of the setting sun and the eventual death of everyone, and is shown through the metaphor of the children becoming tired and the day coming to a close. The use of the diurnal metaphor (presenting a time period of many years using the imagery of a dawn til dusk day) is something I will be using visually in my book.

I plan to have my character undergo a similar thought process as they age and grow alongside the passing of the day. I also find it interesting that each stanza ends with the same words; "on the echoing green" with the exception of the last, which ends with "darkening green" to convey the inevitability of both growing old and night coming. The "echoing green" to me suggests that while these people come and go, the green is eternal and echoes through all these peoples lifetimes. This idea of nature as a constant in our world is also something I will be exploring through my book, as Temple Newsam, the setting for my book, has always been a backdrop in my life and a lot of other people's who I grew up alongside. For this reason it has a certain mythical nature to me as personally I see it as this place seperate to the busy world that has been and will be there forever. I'm going to conduct some more interviews to further enforce this idea of how a nature setting can echo through multiple people and multiple generations.