Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Blake's frontispiece for Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Songs of Contrary States of the Human Soul are two books of poetry by the English poet and painter, William Blake. Although Songs of Innocence was first published by itself in 1789, it is believed that Songs of Experience has always been published in conjunction with Innocence since its completion in 1794. Songs of Innocence mainly consists of poems describing the innocence and joy of the natural world, advocating free love and a closer relationship with God, and most famously including Blake's poem The Lamb. Its poems have a generally light, upbeat and pastoral feel and are typically written from the perspective of children or written about them. Directly contrasting this, Songs of Experience instead deals with the loss of innocence after exposure to the material world and all of its mortal sin during adult life, including works such as The Tyger. Poems here are darker, concentrating on more political and serious themes. Throughout both books, many poems fall into pairs, so that a similar situation or theme can be seen in both Innocence and Experience. Many of the poems appearing in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience with opposing perspectives of the world. This has been understood to be a result of Blake losing faith in the goodness of mankind at the chaotic end of the French Revolution. This analysis seeks to explain much of the volume's sense of despair. Blake gave signs through his work that demonstrate his belief that children lose their innocence through exploitation, education, and religion, all of which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, seem to believe that children should be kept from gaining experience. His poems reflect his belief that every child should be free to gain experience through their own discoveries, unfettered by the dictums of previous generations. In this work as in later works, Blake demonstrates his belief that innocence and experience were "the two contrary states of the human soul", and that innocence is complemented, not lessened, by experience.

Songs of Innocence
Songs of Innocence was originally a complete work first printed in 1789. It is a conceptual collection of 19 poems, engraved with artwork. The poems are each listed below:
Introduction; The Shepherd; The Echoing Green; The Lamb; The Little Black Boy; The Blossom; The Chimney Sweeper; The Little Boy lost; The Little Boy found; Laughing Song; A Cradle Song; The Divine Image; Holy Thursday; Night; Spring; Nurse's Song; Infant Joy; A Dream; On Another's Sorrow.

 The Echoing Green

It is a poem by William Blake published in Songs of Innocence in 1789. The poem talks about merry sounds and images which accompany the children playing outdoors. Then, an old man happily remembers when he enjoyed playing with his friends during his own childhood. The last stanza depicts the little ones being weary when the sun has descended and going to their mothers laps. No more playing is expected, for it is time to take a break after a long day enjoying games. The poem follows the structure of a day 'the sun does arise' in the beginning of the first verse, and 'the sun does descend' in the middle of the third verse. The poem is the contrast of innocence and experience, but also the contrast between perception of joys and sorrows. What is happening on the Green will happen again, shown by the 'old folk' who watch the children and reminisce about their own childhood on the Green. The whole poem is written in 6 sentences with much repetition. The poem could also be attributed to the life of a person birth, life, death.
"The Lamb" is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789. Like many of Blake's works, the poem is about Christianity.

Background Like the other Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Lamb was intended to be sung; William Blake's original melody is now lost. It was made into a song by Vaughan Williams. It was also set to music by Sir John Tavener, who explained, "The Lamb came to me fully grown and was written in an afternoon and dedicated to my nephew Simon for his 3rd birthday." American poet Allen Ginsberg set the poem to music, along with several other of Blake's poems.[1] The Lamb can be compared to a more grandiose Blake poem: The Tyger in Songs of Experience. Critical analysis suggests that both poems, "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," question the Christian belief that God is good; if God is responsible for creating both the good things in life (the lamb) and the evil things (the tyger), how can God be good and moral?[original research?] The lamb in the poem may be compared to Jesus Christ, who is also known as "The Lamb of God".[2] Poetic structure This poem has a simple rhyme scheme : AA BB CC DD AA AA EF DD FE AA The layout is set up by two stanzas with the refrain: "Little Lamb who made thee?/Dost thou know who made thee?" In the first stanza, the speaker wonders who the lamb's creator is; the answer lies at the end of the poem. Here we find a physical description of the lamb, seen as a pure and gentle creature. In the second stanza, the lamb is compared with the infant Jesus, as well as between the lamb and the speaker's soul. In the last two lines the speaker identifies the creator: God.

 The Little Black Boy

is a poem by William Blake published in Songs of Innocence in 1789. It was published during a time when slavery was still legal and the campaign for the abolition of slavery was still young. Analysis of the Poem Blake believed in equality for all men, and this is reflected in this poem. It may not be immediately obvious that this is the case, as the narrative in the first stanza plays upon the traditional stereotypes of "black" and "white", black being the color that denotes evil and sin, - "black, as if beareav'd of light" - and white being the color that denotes innocence and purity. It becomes clear over the course of the poem, however, that Blake had a deeper message to convey to his reader. "The Little Black Boy" was published in 1789, a time when slavery was still legal and the campaign for the abolition of slavery was still young. In "The Little Black Boy", Blake questions conventions of the time with basic Christian ideals. This becomes apparent in the third stanza, where Blake uses the sun as a metaphor for God and His Kingdom. This is a particularly interesting object to choose, as the word is, (on top of being a metaphor) a deliberate pun: "Look on the rising sun: there God does live,". This line is particularly important, as the reference to the sun not only introduces the running religious metaphor in the subsequent stanzas, but the fact that it is "rising" denotes change. In accordance with the running metaphor of the sun, the fact that Blake speaks of "black bodies" and a "sunburnt face" in the fourth stanza seems to imply that black people are near God as a result of their suffering for one can only become dark and sunburned as a result of being exposed to the sun's rays. In the final stanza this idea is developed further, as the black boy says that he will "shade him [the English boy] from the heat", this implies that the English boy's pale skin is not used to the heat (derived from God's love) some critics assert that the paleness of the English boy in this poem is symbolic of the fact that the English were distanced from God as a result of their treatment of the black peoples. In the 5th stanza, we see all of humanity being united: For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear, The cloud will vanish... In the 6th stanza this metaphor is continued: When I from black and he from white cloud free, Here, Blake uses the clouds as a metaphor for the human body. These stanzas therefore imply that after physical life has passed, all will be united with God. Also notable in this poem is Blake's use of politically neutral colours such as gold and silver when describing things of moral value. The most valuable things in life, in terms of spirituality and wisdom are anointed with colours that are indifferent to race and social class, yet are related to financial status, as gold and silver evoke images of precious metals. There is also an underlying theme of institutionalized racism here, with the mother indoctrinating her child with the racist beliefs of slavers.
The Chimney Sweeper is the title of two poems by William Blake, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience in 1794.[1] In the earlier poem, a young chimney sweeper recounts a dream had by one of his fellows, in which an angel rescues the boys from coffins and takes them to a sunny meadow; in the later poem, an apparently adult speaker encounters a child chimney sweeper abandoned in the snow while his parents are at church.

The Divine Image

is a poem by English poet William Blake from his book Songs of Innocence (1789), later included in his joint collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794). In this poem Blake pictures his view of an

ideal world in which the four traditionally Christian virtues -Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love- are found in the human's heart and stand for God's support and comfort. Joy and gratitude are sentiments expressed through prayer for the caring and blessing of an infallible almighty God and are shared by all men on Earth encompassing a sense of equality and mutual respect.

Summary
In The Divine Image, the figures of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love are presented by Blake as the four virtues which are object of prayer in moments of distress, being God praised for his lovely caring and blessing to comfort man. The four virtues are depicted by the author as essential not only in God, but also in man; as Mercy is found in the human heart and Pity in the human face. Similarly, abstract qualities like Peace and Love exist in the human form, becoming the divine form and body of man and resembling God's substantial virtues. Consequently, Blake not only introduces a similarity between the divine image of a benevolent God and the human form, but also the concept of the creation of man after God's divine constituency. Regarded as inborn characteristics of humans by Blake, these essentially Christian virtues can be found in every man's soul on Earth, notwithstanding his origin or religious belief. When Blake refers to the prayer of a Jew or a Turk, he exemplifies all humankind sharing God's virtues in an ideal world regardless the concept of Divinity men may have.

Holy Thursday is a poem by William Blake, from his book of poems Songs of Innocence. (There is also a Holy Thursday poem in Songs of Experience, which contrasts this song.) The poem depicts a religious event carried on on a Holy Thursday, in which rows of clean children dressed in cheerful clothes walk into Saint Paul cathedral in a sort of procession, guided by beadles. Citizens of London town, including the aged man, sit and observe the ceremony while thousands of little boys and girls elevate their hands and a song is raised to Heaven. The poem is a criticism of the Foundling Hospital. Orphans at the hospital would be cleaned and marched annually to Saint Paul cathedral to sing. This was seen as a treat for the orphans. The bleak reality of their lives is depicted in Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience).

Nurse's Song is the name of two related poems by William Blake, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience in 1794. The poem in Songs of Innocence tells the tale of a Nurse, who, we are to assume, is looking over some children playing out in the field. After trying to call them in, they protest, claiming that it is still light, and therefore there is still time to play. The poem fits in with the theme of innocence, as it makes no mention of the negative aspects of playing outside; the children are oblivious to the dangers of playing outside late at night that would be considered in a modern society. The language uses various images associated with children's playing and imagination. The Nurse is of a jovial and warmhearted nature, as she allows the children to continue with their games, with no thought for the wider consequences. The poem in Songs of Experience is a bitter and remorseful tale. The poem portrays the Nurse in a different light: she is bitter and jealous of the innocence that the children possess. Blake may be trying to portray the Nurse as a woman crushed by the weight of the world and turned bitter and cruel, no longer able to see the

positive aspects of life. The language reflects her bitter nature, for example, "my face turns green and pale" and "wasted in play".
Infant Joy' was published in 1789 in 'Songs of Innocence' and is the counterpart to "Infant Sorrow" which was published at a later date in 'Songs of Experience' in 1794. Probably the most famous poems in these two books are 'The Tyger in 'Songs of Experience' and its counterpart 'The Lamb' in 'Songs of Innocence'. Both 'Infant Joy' and 'Infant Sorrow' use two stanzas, however, Infant Sorrow uses a regular AABB rhyme scheme for both stanzas; whereas, Infant Joy uses ABCDAC for the first stanza, and ABCDDC for the second. The most marked pattern in Infant Joy is the double rhyme repeated in lines three, six, nine, and twelve, this pattern contrasts with the more insistent rhymes found in Infant Sorrow, and gives the poem a more tentative quality. It could be argued that this tentative air suggests the idea that although the speaker wishes the child a joyful life, he or she knows that this is unlikely to happen. This would suggest that the adults naming of the child is a tentative wish, rather than manipulation.

Songs of Experience
Blake's title plate (No.29) for Songs of Experience

Songs of Experience is a 1794 poetry collection of 26 poems forming the second part of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Some of the poems, such as The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found were moved by Blake to Songs of Innocence, and were frequently moved between the two books. In this collection of poems, Blake contrasts Songs of Innocence, in which he shows how the human spirit blossoms when allowed its own free movement with Songs of Experience, in which he shows how the human spirit withers after it has been suppressed and forced to conform to rules, and doctrines. In fact, Blake was an English Dissenter and actively opposed the doctrines of the Anglican Church, which tells its members to suppress their feelings. Blake showed how he believed this was wrong through his poems in Songs of Experience. The most notable of the poems in Songs of Experience are: "The Tyger", "The Sick Rose", "Ah, Sunflower," "A Poison Tree" and "London". Although these poems today are enjoyed and appreciated, in Blake's time, they were not appreciated at all. Blake lived this whole life in poverty and in heavy debt. Songs of Experience only sold 20 copies before his death in 1827. It is now used in the school GCSE and A-level curriculum.
Introduction (Experience); Earth's Answer; My Pretty Rose Tree; A Poison Tree; The Tyger; The Sick Rose; Infant Sorrow; The Chimney Sweeper (Experience); Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience); London; Ah! Sunflower; The Fly; The Clod and the Pebble; The Garden of Love; The Voice of the Ancient Bard; A Divine Image

Musical settings
Poems from both books have been set to music by many composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten. Individual poems have also been set by, among others, John Tavener, Jah Wobble, Tangerine Dream. A modified version of the poem "The Little Black Boy" was set to music in the song "My Mother Bore Me" from Maury Yeston's musical Phantom. Folk musician Greg Brown recorded sixteen of the poems on his 1987 album Songs of Innocence and of Experience[1] and by Finn Coren in his Blake Project.

Poet Allen Ginsberg believed the poems were originally intended to be sung, and that through study of the rhyme and meter of the works, a Blakean performance could be approximately replicated. In 1969, he conceived, arranged, directed, sang on, and played piano and harmonium for an album of songs entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg (1970). The composer William Bolcom completed a setting of the entire collection of poems in 1984. In 2005, a recording of Bolcom's work by the University of Michigan on the Naxos label won 3 Grammy Awards: Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Best Classical Album.

A Poison tree it is a poem written in 1794 by the famous poet William Blake as a part of his collection of poems, Songs of Experience. Although it is one of Blake's less known poems, it is full of meaning and is often considered to be one of his finest poems.

Analysis

First Quatrain
to resolve it. It also shows how people categorize their fellows as 'friends' or 'foes', and how this affects their behavior towards individuals in each category.

Second Quatrain
The speaker begins to make his anger grow and takes pleasure in it, comparing his anger with a small plant. The speaker is creating a trap for his enemy by creating an illusion of friendliness.

Third Quatrain
The speaker's wrath begins to 'bear fruit' and produces something terrible yet tempting. This can be compared to story of the Garden of Eden. The Fruit of Knowledge seems good at first, but turns out to be something for which Eve was punished. Likewise, the speaker seems friendly towards his foe, but is hiding malicious intentions.

Fourth Quatrain
The poet begins to speed up the poem to the climax. When the foe saw the apple shine, the audience becomes aware that he has fallen for the trap. When the foe stole into the speaker's garden, he was again fooled by the speaker. Then, the foe breaks in when the Pole is veiled (meaning that the Pole star is veiled, signifying nighttime). When the speaker says that his foe was outstretched under the tree, it could be read that:

the foe had consumed the poison and died, pleasing the speaker the foe is just lying beneath the tree, and has realized the speaker's hostile intentions

However this second interpretation is far less likely given Blake's original imagery: http://www.metmuseum.org/special/William_Blake/19.L.htm

Interpretations
William Blake was an English Dissenter and Dissenter members broke away from the Anglican Church and refused to take part in its policies. Dissenters believed that the ideals and policies of the Anglican Church

were wrong and so opposed it in nearly every aspect. Blake began writing a collection of poems called Songs of Experience to protest the Anglican Church's policy of stifling "sinful" emotions in people, such as anger. A Poison Tree is a good example of this because it shows how Blake believed that stifling anger would only cause the anger to grow. In fact, Blake even decided to call the original draft of a Poison Tree, "Christian Forebearance." However, the English government did not tolerate the radical actions of the English Dissenters and they persecuted them. In order to escape persecution, Blake had to make his message symbolic. The poem has been set to music several times including by Greg Brown and Blur. In the B-Side to Blur's single "Girls and Boys", "Magpie", the lyrics are the poem.

The Tyger
it is a poem by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Experience in 1794. It is one of Blake's best known and most analyzed poems. The Cambridge Companion to William Blake (2003) calls it "the most anthologized poem in English."[1] Most modern anthologies maintain Blake's choice of the archaic spelling "tyger". It was already "slightly archaic"[2] when he wrote the poem, he spelled it as "tiger" elsewhere,[1] and many of his poetic effects "depended on subtle differences of punctuation and of spelling."[3] Thus, his choice of "tyger" has usually been interpreted as being for effect, perhaps to render an "exotic or alien quality of the beast",[4] or because it's not really about a "tiger" at all, but a metaphor.[1] The Tyger is the sister poem to The Lamb (from Songs of Innocence). The Lamb is a reflection on similar ideas from a different perspective, but it focuses more on goodness than evil.

The Sick Rose is a poem by William Blake. The first publication was in 1794, when it was included in his collection titled Songs of Experience as the 39th plate. The incipit of the poem is O Rose thou art sick. Blake composed the page sometime after 1789, and presents it with the illuminated border and illustrations that were typical of his self publications. Most aspects of the original production were undertaken by the author, the composition of the poem and design, engraving, and promotion of the work. The printing was usually done by Blake's wife, Catherine, as well as any colouring not performed by Blake himself.[1]

Holy Thursday it is a poem by William Blake, first published in Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1794. This poem, unlike its companion poem in "Songs of Innocence" (1789), focuses more on society as a whole than the Holy Thursday ceremony.

Analysis
The primary objective of this poem is to question social and moral injustice. In the first stanza, Blake contrasts the "rich and fruitful land" with the actions of a "cold and usurous hand" - thereby continuing his questioning of the virtue of a society where resources are abundant but children are still "reduced to misery".

"Holy" or "Maundy" Thursday refers to the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples as recorded in the biblical New Testament. One particularly significant episode during that event was that of the master's washing of his disciples' feet - an act which signified the utmost humility in service. English monarchs and the wealthy traditionally used this festival for symbolic acts of charity: with the complementary poem in "Songs of Innocence", Blake pictures such an act, of which he appears to approve, carried out in St. Paul's Cathedral. However, our appreciation of the "wise guardians of the poor" thus advertising their charity may not be wholly shared by Blake's "Piper", the supposed narrator of the "Songs of Innocence". In their state of innocence, children should not be regimented; rather, they should be playing blithely on the "ecchoing green". The children in this poem 'assert and preserve their essential innocence not by going to church, but by freely and spontaneously, "like a mighty wind," raising to "heaven the voice of song." '[1] With his "Holy Thursday" of the "Songs of Experience", Blake's "Bard" clarifies his view of the hypocrisy of formalised religion and its claimed acts of charity. He exposes the established church's self-congratulatory hymns as a sham, suggesting in his second stanza that the sound which would represent the day more accurately would be the "trembling cry" of a poor child. The poet, as Bard, states that although England may be objectively a "rich and fruitful land", the unfeeling profit-orientated power of authority has designed for the innocent children suffering within it an "eternal winter". The biblical connotations of the rhetorical opening point us towards Blake's assertion that a country whose children live in want cannot be described as truly "rich". With the apparent contradiction of two climatic opposites existing simultaneously within the one geopolitical unit, we are offered a metaphor for England's man-made "two nations". Blake wrote during the "industrial revolution", whose pioneers congratulated themselves upon their vigorous increases in output. The poet argues that until increases in production are linked to more equitable distribution, England will always be a land of barren winter.

London is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Experience in 1794. It is one of the few poems in Songs of Experience which does not have a corresponding poem in Songs of Innocence.

Analysis
As with most of Blake's poetry, there are several critical interpretations of London. The most common interpretation, favored by critics such as Camille Paglia[2] and E.P. Thompson, holds that London is primarily a social protest. A less frequently held view is that of Harold Bloom; that London primarily is Blake's response to the tradition of Biblical prophecy. The use of the word 'Chartered' is ambiguous. It may express the political and economic control that Blake considered London to be enduring at the time of his writing. Blake's friend Thomas Paine had criticised the granting of Royal Charters to control trade as a form of class oppression.[3] However, 'chartered' could also mean 'freighted', and may refer to the busy or overburdened streets and river, or to the licenced trade carried on within them.[4] In Blake's notebook, the word 'chartered' originally read, 'dirty' In Thompson's view, Blake was an unorthodox Christian of the dissenting tradition, who felt that the state was abandoning those in need. He was heavily influenced by mystical groups.[5] The poem reflects Blake's extreme disillusionment with the suffering he saw in London.[6]

The reference to a harlot blighting the 'marriage hearse' with 'plague' is usually understood to refer to the spread of venereal disease in the city, passed by a prostitute to a man and thence his bride, so that marriage can become a sentence of death.[7] The poem was published during the upheavals of the French Revolution, and the city of London was suffering political and social unrest, due to the marked social and working inequalities of the time. An understandably nervous government had responded by introducing restrictions on the freedom of speech and the mobilisation of foreign mercenaries.[citation needed] The City of London was a town that was shackled to landlords and owners that controlled and demeaned the majority of the lower and middle classes.[citation needed] Within the poem that bears the city's name, Blake describes 18th century London as a conurbation filled with people who understood, with depressing wisdom, both the hopelessness and misery of their situation.[citation needed]

Context
The poet William Blake was a poet and artist who specialised in illuminated texts, often of a religious nature. He rejected established religion for various reasons. One of the main ones was the failure of the established Church to help children in London who were forced to work. Blake lived and worked in the capital, so was arguably well placed to write clearly about the conditions people who lived there faced. Songs of Innocence and of Experience Published in 1794, this collection of poems, fully illustrated and originally hand-printed by Blake, aimed to show the "Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". The Songs of Innocence section contains poems which are positive in tone and celebrate love, childhood and nature. The Songs of Experience poems are obviously intended to provide a contrast, and illustrate the effects of modern life on people and nature. Dangerous industrial conditions, child labour, prostitution and poverty are just some of the topics Blake explores. The French Revolution In 1789, the French people revolted against the monarchy and aristocracy, using violence and murder to overthrow those in power. Many saw the French Revolution as inspirational - a model for how ordinary, disadvantaged people could seize power. Blake alludes to the revolution in London, arguably suggesting that the experience of living there could encourage a revolution on the streets of the capital.