WILLIAM BLAKE (SONG OF INNOCENCE)

THE SHEPHERD
The concern of the poem with shepherd and sheep places it within the pastoral tradition.
That imagery also related to the many images of shepherds and sheep in the Bible which are
intrinsic to the depiction of God. This poem seems a simple poem of praise. Blakes original
readers would immediately identify the parallels between shepherd and sheep. Sheep and
shepherd/sheep imagery used throughout the Bible to describe the relationship between
god and humankind.

The Role of The Shepherd in the Poem

The Shepherd plays a significant role, perhaps most aptly the role of a guardian angel. His
presence is only entitled with security and safety of the flock of sheep. The poet plays with the
lyrics to ensure the security is actually felt by the sheep and is not just superimposed. We never
find a hint of the Shepherds dominance, have perceives him as friendly. He only involves in
taking care of his allies and provides them all the liberty to move far and wide! However, its only
the sheep who feel comfortable to rest in the Shepherds proximity. for they know when the
Shepherd is nigh

THE ECHOING GREEN

Spring - Blake uses the image of spring because of its associations with growth and fertility. Spring is
also the season for the birth of animals, for the appearance of flowers after winter, for birdsong. All of
these represent what is natural, new and uncorrupted. They therefore suit the expression of innocence.
Play - Blake links the play of the children to the coming of spring to emphasise the relationship
between the two. Children, in these poems, are fresh and untouched by experience; they share the
freedom and naturalness of the birds. Play is also associated with youth. It reminds the elders of their
own youth, but there is a sense that it does not survive the ending of the day / the ending of childhood.
The green - Blake develops his own symbols in these poems as well as using established ones. Here
he begins his image of the green, usually the village green. This has three, inter-linked, aspects:

The colour green is associated with growth, fertility and spring

Village greens were places of play and freedom. They represented the importance of play,
and therefore of imagination, in human life
Village greens were not owned by anyone but were common land. They therefore represented
another kind of freedom, freedom from the rule or demands of a landowner or authority figure.
They were the opposite of chartered' towns which were under the authority of their officials.

Development of thought: In the poem, The Echoing Green Blake has presented a happy country side view
where the arrival of spring is welcomed by sunny sky and ringing bells. This poem is a blend of childlike
innocence and grayness of later years. It is symbolic and draws a contrast between youth and old age. Here, a
child describes his cheerful games on a lush space, called The Echoing Green because the childrens
exclamations echo over it. The spring symbolizes the youth and the children. Morning is the beginning of life and
the dark evening is the end. Here Blake has wanted to show that, the children are carefree and they are

always busy in their games. They are seen laughing and enjoying themselves in the echoing green. The poet
symbolizes the innocence and delicacy of children with the birds. The birds are happy and they sing their heart
out. When the old people with their folks observe their playing they recall their nostology and share themselves,
about the game that they played in their childhood, that they will not regain the days and games. When the
children are very busy in their games, the ringing bells make them cheerful. When it becomes dark, all the sports
and play have come to an end for the day. Like the birds the children go back to their residences and are ready
to take a goodnights rest in the laps of their mothers, sisters and brothers like little birds in a nest. So, on the
darkening green the games are not seen.

THE LAMB
Lines 15-16
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.

OK, we can put it off no longer: the Lamb is a symbol for Jesus Christ. In John 29 of the
Bible, Jesus is called "The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." What this
poem about innocence doesn't mention is that Christ is a like a lamb because lambs get
sacrificed. Gulp.
In the English Christian tradition, Jesus has been called "meek" and "mild" for the way he
submitted to God's will and for his gentle treatment of sinful humans. He "became a little
child" when he was born into the world (which Christians celebrate on Christmas).
Blake's poem seems to borrow from the words of Englishman Charles Wesley, who
published a hymn called "Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild" in 1742. Charles's brother, John
Wesley, founded the Methodist Church. The hymn includes the line, "Lamb of God, I look
to Thee." If you read the whole thing (read it here), you'll see just how much Blake'sSongs
of Innocence and Experience resemble church songs.

Lines 17-18
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.

The speaker reveals himself to be a child.

And the lambis still a lamb.
In fact, all the characters in this poem can be viewed as lambs: child, real lamb, and
Jesus. They can also be seen as children children of God. Got that?

Lines 19-20
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!

In these lines, we imagine the child patting the lamb on the head and running off to find
some new adventure.
He seems to have been instructing the lovable farm animal on the basics of the Christian
religion.
He blesses the lamb twice, completing the pattern in which the lamb is addressed as
"thee" two times at the beginning and end of each stanza.

Commentary
The poem is a childs song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza is rural and
descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains explanation and
analogy. The childs question is both naive and profound. The question (who made thee?) is a
simple one, and yet the child is also tapping into the deep and timeless questions that all human
beings have, about their own origins and the nature of creation. The poems apostrophic form
contributes to the effect of naivet, since the situation of a child talking to an animal is a
believable one, and not simply a literary contrivance. Yet by answering his own question, the child
converts it into a rhetorical one, thus counteracting the initial spontaneous sense of the poem.
The answer is presented as a puzzle or riddle, and even though it is an easy onechilds play
this also contributes to an underlying sense of ironic knowingness or artifice in the poem. The
childs answer, however, reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and his innocent
acceptance of its teachings.
The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores the
Christian values of gentleness, meekness, and peace. The image of the child is also associated
with Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for children, and the Bibles
depiction of Jesus in his childhood shows him as guileless and vulnerable. These are also the
characteristics from which the child-speaker approaches the ideas of nature and of God. This
poem, like many of the Songs of Innocence, accepts what Blake saw as the more positive
aspects of conventional Christian belief. But it does not provide a completely adequate doctrine,
because it fails to account for the presence of suffering and evil in the world. The pendant (or
companion) poem to this one, found in theSongs of Experience, is The Tyger; taken together,
the two poems give a perspective on religion that includes the good and clear as well as the
terrible and inscrutable. These poems complement each other to produce a fuller account than
either offers independently. They offer a good instance of how Blake himself stands somewhere
outside the perspectives of innocence and experience he projects.

THE LITTLE BLACK BOY

No matter their relative positions in this life or the next, the theme of equality of men
before God is strongly prevalent in this poem. The black boy and his mother have voices
whereas the white English boy is silent, and both black and white will one day be
recognized as pure souls before God. This concept of a future society, usually a heavenly
one, in which inequities are resolved is a recurring one in Blake's Songs of
Innocence, most notably in the later The Chimney Sweeper. In this instance, Blake is
not criticizing a mentality that offers platitudes to control the oppressed. Instead, he
claims that the very life the boy leads is part of his future perfection.

Summary
A black child tells the story of how he came to know his own identity and to know God. The boy,
who was born in the southern wild of Africa, first explains that though his skin is black his soul is
as white as that of an English child. He relates how his loving mother taught him about God who
lives in the East, who gives light and life to all creation and comfort and joy to men. We are put
on earth, his mother says, to learn to accept Gods love. He is told that his black skin is but a
cloud that will be dissipated when his soul meets God in heaven. The black boy passes on this
lesson to an English child, explaining that his white skin is likewise a cloud. He vows that when
they are both free of their bodies and delighting in the presence of God, he will shade his white
friend until he, too, learns to bear the heat of Gods love. Then, the black boy says, he will be like
the English boy, and the English boy will love him.

Commentary
This poem centers on a spiritual awakening to a divine love that transcends race. The speaker is
an African child who has to come to terms with his own blackness. Blake builds the poem on
clear imagery of light and dark. The contrast in the first stanza between the childs black skin and
his belief in the whiteness of his soul lends poignancy to his particular problem of selfunderstanding. In a culture in which black and white connote bad and good, respectively, the
childs developing sense of self requires him to perform some fairly elaborate symbolic
gymnastics with these images of color. His statement that he is black as if bereavd of light
underscores the gravity of the problem. The gesture of his song will be to counteract this as if in
a way that shows him to be as capable and deserving of perfect love as a white person is.
The childs mother symbolizes a natural and selfless love that becomes the poems ideal. She
shows a tender concern for her childs self-esteem, as well as a strong desire that he know the
comfort of God. She persuades him, according to conventional Christian doctrine, that earthly life
is but a preparation for the rewards of heaven. In this context, their dark skin is similarly but a
temporary appearance, with no bearing on their eternal essence: skin, which is a factor only in
this earthly life, becomes irrelevant from the perspective of heaven. Body and soul, black and
white, and earth and heaven are all aligned in a rhetorical gesture that basically confirms the
stance of Christian resignation: the theology of the poem is one that counsels forbearance in the
present and promises a recompense for suffering in the hereafter.
The black boy internalizes his mothers lesson and applies it in his relations with the outer world;
specifically, Blake shows us what happens when the boy applies it to his relationship with a white
child. The results are ambivalent. The boy explains to his white friend that they are equals, but
that neither will be truly free until they are released from the constraints of the physical world. He
imagines himself shading his friend from the brightness of Gods love until he can become

accustomed to it. This statement implies that the black boy is better prepared for heaven than the
white boy, perhaps because of the greater burden of his dark skin has posed during earthly life.
This is part of the consoling vision with which his mother has prepared him, which allows his
suffering to become a source of pride rather than shame. But the boys outlook, and his
deference to the white boy, may strike the reader (who has not his innocence) as containing a
naive blindness to the realities of oppression and racism, and a too-passive acceptance of
suffering and injustice. We do not witness the response of the white boy; Blakes focus in this
poem is on the mental state of the black child. But the question remains of whether the childs
outlook is servile and self-demeaning, or exemplifies Christian charity. The poem itself implies
that these might amount to the same thing.

Imagery and symbolism

Blake was concerned to express what he believed was his true understanding ofChristianity. He was
writing for a public that, for the most part, was Christian and shared Blake's familiarity with the Bible.
Thus, he used Christian images that he knew his readers would recognise, but in ways which
questioned how the image was commonly understood. Here, he uses several images and refers to
related biblical ideas.
Tree suggests the Tree of knowledge of good and evil in Paradise, the Garden of
Eden. Adamand Eve were told by God not to eat the fruit of this tree. However, Eve was tempted by
the devilin the guise of a serpent, so she ate some and then gave it to Adam. (SeeGenesis 3) As a
result, they fell from innocence, became aware of their nakedness and developed shame about it.
They were cast out of Eden.
Blake locates this tree' as being within the human mind in his Songs of Experience. Since the boy
learns his lesson about love and endurance under the tree, it suggests its link with fallen versions of
reality. The lesson the boy is given may be reassuring but it is a lesson fallen human beings have
developed to keep people in control. When it is accepted by the naively innocent, it is therefore
perpetuated.
East the direction of the rising sun, and in Christianity associated with theresurrection of Christ and
so with eternal life.
Black body/sunburnt face This reference would remind Blake's readers of the Old
Testament poem the Song of Songs, where the bride, whose face is black and sunburnt, is considered
beautiful. (Song of Songs 1:6). The Song of Songs (sometimes called The Song of Solomon) is an
unashamedly erotic poem. It is seen by the Church as an image of the spiritual love-relationship:

Between Christ and the soul

Between Christ and the Church
Between God and the Virgin Mary.

In medieval literature, it is used as an image for sexual encounter / sexual relationship. This image
underlines the essential equality of the black boy as one who is loved by God. Since the Song of
Songs is a poem which is interpreted in ways far removed from its original purpose, referencing it
stresses Blake's idea that what humans tell themselves can differ from the reality.

Lambs The lamb image implies innocence, meekness and the figure of Christ. Jesus is portrayed as
meek like a lamb before his accusers in 1 Peter 1:19. He is called the Lamb of God' who takes away
the sins of the world inJohn 1:29 and is identified as a sacrificial lamb in 1 Corinthians 5:7. The context
and connotations are very different from the use here. This lamb is not a soft, woolly animal but a
sacrificial victim. He is associated with human violence and treachery, with the consequences of evil.
In the light of this, we can see that there are other dimensions to being like lambs' of which the boy is
unaware, even though his actions make him a sacrificial figure.
Golden tent The image of a golden tent perhaps conjures up for Blake's readers the golden tent of a
monarch celebrating victory after a chivalric tournament. In the Old Testament, God's presence was
said to inhabit a tent ortabernacle Exodus 40:34-35
[child] - Underlying the poem, though the term is not used, is the fact that the speaker is a child. All
Blake's associations with the image of the child are therefore in the background of the poem and affect
our understanding of it.
At one level, the child is an image of innocence and gentleness. In the Gospels, Jesus says that
the kingdom of God belongs to those who become like little children in their innocence and humility.
However, the Gospel accounts of Jesus' birth and childhood include experience of human violence
and so emphasise the vulnerability of the child:

He is acclaimed by the prophet [3Simeon as one who will bring about the fall and rise of many
(Luke 2:34-35)
Then his parents become refugees to escape King Herod's attempts to kill Jesus by ordering
the slaughter of all boys under two (see Matthew 2:1618).

Like the lamb, the child is gentle and innocent but, because of this, also vulnerable and subject to
human cruelty. The boy in this poem is in just this situation.

An essay about William Blake's Poem "The Chimney Sweeper. It tells how the children in
England were maltreated and exploited, and how the church and the government turned a blind
eye about their plight.

The Chimney Sweeper

William Blakes The Chimney Sweeper is a short lyric poem that portrays kids as young as five
years of age who are sold by their parents and traded into a life that is completely at the mercy of
their owner. Being small in size, they are the only ones who can fit into the chimney and are force
to do the task of cleaning and removing the soota black substance that rise in fine particles and
adheres to the side of the chimney. As a result of daily inhalation of these particles, many kids die
early and never given the chance to grow up into adulthood. In this poem, by using symbolism
and heavenly images, Blake emphasizes the naivet of the kids and the faith and hope that they
hold in God, that whatever pain and suffering they experience here on earth are nothing
compared to the joys that await them in heaven.
In the first stanza of the poem, Blake illustrates the naivet of the speaker when he talks about
how his father gets rid of him when he is still a baby.
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep (1-3).
The nave child is more accepting of his situation .Though sold into child labor, he does not hold
any grudges against his father or the society that put him in the worst situation, instead he
accepts life as it is and makes the best life here on earth.
In the second stanza of The Chimney Sweeper, Blake symbolizes it with faith when the speaker
tries to comfort Tom,
Theres little Tom Dacre who cried when his head
That curld like a lambs back, was shavd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your heads bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair (7-8).
The speaker tries to reassure Tom that it is better off if he does not have hair anymore so it will
not get dirty by the dust in the chimney. This shows the pure ignorance and beliefs that the
speaker holds in his heart. By giving comfort to Tom, he believes that everything will be alright as
long as they will obey and follow their master even though their obedience will eventually cost

them their own lives. Young Tom is that of a sacrificial Lamb of God and when the speaker tells
Tom to stop crying because he knows that the soot can no longer spoils his white hair, he is
saying to Tom that once he makes his sacrifice, nothing else can hurt him.
In the fourth stanza, Blake implies hope when Tom dreams of an angel freeing them of their
misery.
And by came an angel who had a bright key,
And he opend the coffins & set them all free(13-14).
He dreams of the other chimney sweepers being locked in black coffins, symbolic of the harsh
conditions that the sweeps lived-- being poor, outcasts in society and having stained unwashed
skin and often disfigured bodies. It also symbolizes their death. The angel opening the coffins and
freeing the sweeps shows the freeing of Tom and other sweeps from their oppressive lifestyles.
These ideas of hope and happiness place further emphasis in the fifth stanza of the poem,
The angel told Tom if hed be a good boy,
Hed have God for his father & never want joy (19-22).
The angel tells Tom that if he does his duty, he will have God as his father, someone he does not
have when he is growing up. God would not leave him as his parents have forsaken him but
instead he would have everything he could ever-possibly desire. This provides more than enough
reason for Tom to continue with his dreadful duties in order to one day be finally free and be with
his creator.
Tom is originally frightened and sad but later feels, happy and warm by the outcome of his
dream. He experiences a certain degree of happiness even in the worst of circumstances. His
dream makes him hope that a wonderful life awaits him and the kids. He realizes that as long as
they make the sacrifice of living out their lives here on earth, no matter how dismal and dark it
may seem, they will be rewarded in heaven. His faith in God is so strong that it becomes his only
constant source of hope and inspiration.
Blake writes this poem to let the reader knows that many kids lives are being exploited in the
cities of England. He expresses his disgust about the plight of the majority of the chimney
sweepers and how the society and church turn a blind eye of their sufferings. In the society they
live in, innocent children are in anguish because of the harsh treatment of the adult
population .While it endorses hope, the reader must acknowledge that something needs to be
done to improve the lives of these children.

A CRADLE SONG
Summary
This poem is meant to be a lullaby sung by a mother to her child. The accompanying
plate depicts the mother watching over her newborn under she soft shading of a large
tree. Just like the last word in the title, "song," and the simple 'aabb ccdd eeff ...'
rhyming scheme, it is fair to assume that Blake intended this lyric to be sung.
On a deeper level, Blake is reaching out to glorify the natural world, within which we live,
in the face of a more subjective heaven, where the Gods reside. There is a revealing
humanistic 'heavenly' innocence and purity that the mother praises in the child who holds
"secret joys and secret smiles." Notice how the "infant's smiles and wiles" is capable of
beguiling both heaven and earth alike.

Analysis
"Cradle Song" is often praised as a perfect balance between thought and emotion,
capturing the mother's joy and love for her child while at the same time expressing her
largest fears and meditation on the child's future role in man's world. The ending of the
fourth stanza is perhaps the strongest example of the mother's fear, certainty, and
gloom that one day her child's "little heart [will] wake" and when that happens, "the
dreadful lightnings break." Blake's repeated theme of passing from innocence to
experience is obvious in this sweet lullaby.
The speaker is at peace with her child and situation at the beginning of the poem. The
personification placed on "little sorrows" who "sit and weep" during the night is
representative of the peace found in night, the period of innocence in Blake's constantrunning imagery of oppositions between night and day, and suggests the passing of the
child from one world (harmful earth) to the next (safe heaven). But notice when morning
breaks in line 10, the tranquility is "stolen" from the child, and "cunning wiles" begin to
creep into the child's heart (the mother even refers to the morning as "dreadful").
Overall, the poem can be read as a metaphor for the mother's awareness and inability to
alter or stop her child from growing up in this world and losing all of his/her innocence.
The first half of the poem is a snapshot of how peaceful and joyful the sleeping babe is,
but "youthful harvesting" is inevitable, and the mother is left saddened at the fact that
while her child may "beguile both heaven and earth" at the moment, it is only a
temporary serenity, and it will not be long before all purity and innocence is lost.

Blake repeats the words sweet, sleep, and smile(s) a number of times in the first five stanzas.
The repetition creates a verbal lulling its soft and gentle - like a tender rocking motion. He
shows the mother-child bond rather than tells. All people instinctively know this protection. In
a mothers arms, sleep is not the deep, dark place of nightmares. With the mothers crooning
voice, sleep is a secure place babys experience.
Stanza 1, Lines 3 and 4, Sweet dreams of pleasant streams/By happy silent moony beams
addresses that there is an infinite universe. The mother watches over the baby, just as
Someone watches over the infinite universe. The lines set the tone for Blakes beliefs that
although the mother and baby are unnamed, theres a comparison between the mother and
child and the dark, starry night the mother sings about in her lullaby.
The first five stanzas reiterate the babys innocence in addition to the mothers watchfulness.
Line 1 and 3 of each stanza (S) repeat themselves. In S1 Sweet dreams. Next, S2

Sweet sleep. After that, S3, Sweet smiles. For S4, Sweet moans. In S5, Sleep sleep.
And finally, in S6, Sweet babe. In Lines 2 and 4, show how the mother cares for the infant.
Not until stanzas five through seven do readers get any idea that this poem may not be about
any mother or infant. Throughout the whole poem, neither is named nor described in any
great detail. But it is words and phrases like, All creation, Holy image, Thy maker, and
heaven and earth that give some indication of the unique quality of this mother and child. It
is in the last stanza that Blake reveals his poems purpose.
The mother wants to keep her child totally innocent with no experience of woe' (See Religious /
philosophical background > Philosophical influences on Blake> Blake and Jacob Boehme) Even the
dovelike moans' must be calmed. Yet the mother can't ignore that there is cause for sorrow in life. She
seems to weep over what the child must face, which she longs to keep at bay. This recognition leads
her to thoughts of Jesus who came to share that experience of human sorrow.

THE LITTLE BOY LOST

The first impression that The Little Boy Lost gives is of a pitiful, helpless child appealing to the
uncaring father who strides on before him, ignoring his questions and pleas. However, Blakes
illustration suggests a very different interpretation, as the little boy follows a cloudy figure that he
mistakenly takes as being his father when in fact no father was there. The boy has been misled by
the depth of the mist, or mire, and by what is variously described as a vapour or, in The Little
Boy Found, a wandring light. When he realises that he is lost, it is a watchful, caring and
affectionate God who appears like his father in white to guide him safely home to his anxious
mother.
The first stanza of The Little Boy Lost is the urgent, plaintive voice of the boy, while the second
stanza is an impersonal narrative voice, which continues into The Little Boy Found. The metre of
both poems is irregular, with some use of falling rhythm, with the emphasis on the first beat of
each foot (although the second and fourth line of each stanza of The Little Boy Lost is iambic).
However, there is a noticeable rhythmic lightening in the second poem, echoing the story-line as
the child is rescued. This is achieved by the predominance of a three-beat rhythm, where The Little
Boy Lost is written predominantly with two beats to each foot, creating a more urgent, perhaps
even aggressive mood.
In the Songs of Innocence, God is always protective and benign; the behaviour and attitude of the
mother resembles that of the parents in The Little Girl Found. Again, the parents are protective,
and the view that is offered is comforting to a child. The Songs of Innocence include some
uncomfortable or even terrifying moments for a child, but there is always a sense of somebody
watching and guarding. The only clearly uncaring parent in the Songs of Innocence is the father
in The Chimney Sweeper, who sold his son and condemned him to his life as a sweep.

Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experience (1 7 9 4 ) juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of
childhood against an adult world of corruption and repression; while such poems as The
Lamb represent a meek virtue, poems like The Tygerexhibit opposing, darker forces. Thus the
collection as a whole explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the world.
Many of the poems fall into pairs, so that the same situation or problem is seen through the lens
of innocence first and then experience. Blake does not identify himself wholly with either view;
most of the poems are dramaticthat is, in the voice of a speaker other than the poet himself.
Blake stands outside innocence and experience, in a distanced position from which he hopes to
be able to recognize and correct the fallacies of both. In particular, he pits himself against
despotic authority, restrictive morality, sexual repression, and institutionalized religion; his great
insight is into the way these separate modes of control work together to squelch what is most holy
in human beings.
The Songs of Innocence dramatize the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and
trace their transformation as the child grows into adulthood. Some of the poems are written from
the perspective of children, while others are about children as seen from an adult perspective.
Many of the poems draw attention to the positive aspects of natural human understanding prior to
the corruption and distortion of experience. Others take a more critical stance toward innocent
purity: for example, while Blake draws touching portraits of the emotional power of rudimentary
Christian values, he also exposesover the heads, as it were, of the innocentChristianitys
capacity for promoting injustice and cruelty.
The Songs of Experience work via parallels and contrasts to lament the ways in which the harsh
experiences of adult life destroy what is good in innocence, while also articulating the
weaknesses of the innocent perspective (The Tyger,for example, attempts to account for real,
negative forces in the universe, which innocence fails to confront). These latter poems treat
sexual morality in terms of the repressive effects of jealousy, shame, and secrecy, all of which
corrupt the ingenuousness of innocent love. With regard to religion, they are less concerned with
the character of individual faith than with the institution of the Church, its role in politics, and its
effects on society and the individual mind. Experience thus adds a layer to innocence that
darkens its hopeful vision while compensating for some of its blindness.
The style of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is simple and direct, but the language and
the rhythms are painstakingly crafted, and the ideas they explore are often deceptively complex.
Many of the poems are narrative in style; others, like The Sick Rose and The Divine
Image, make their arguments through symbolism or by means of abstract concepts. Some of
Blakes favorite rhetorical techniques are personification and the reworking of Biblical symbolism
and language. Blake frequently employs the familiar meters of ballads, nursery rhymes, and
hymns, applying them to his own, often unorthodox conceptions. This combination of the

traditional with the unfamiliar is consonant with Blakes perpetual interest in reconsidering and
reframing the assumptions of human thought and social behavior.
William Blake was born in London in 1 7 5 7 . His father, a hosier, soon recognized his sons artistic
talents and sent him to study at a drawing school when he was ten years old. At 1 4 , William
asked to be apprenticed to the engraver James Basire, under whose direction he further
developed his innate skills. As a young man Blake worked as an engraver, illustrator, and
drawing teacher, and met such artists as Henry Fuseli and John Flaxman, as well as Sir Joshua
Reynolds, whose classicizing style he would later come to reject. Blake wrote poems during this
time as well, and his first printed collection, an immature and rather derivative volume
called Poetical Sketches, appeared in 1 7 8 3 . Songs of Innocence was published in 1 7 8 9 ,
followed by Songs of Experience in 1 7 9 3 and a combined edition the next year bearing the
title Songs of Innocence and Experience showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
Blakes political radicalism intensified during the years leading up to the French Revolution. He
began a seven-book poem about the Revolution, in fact, but it was either destroyed or never
completed, and only the first book survives. He disapproved of Enlightenment rationalism, of
institutionalized religion, and of the tradition of marriage in its conventional legal and social form
(though he was married himself). His unorthodox religious thinking owes a debt to the Swedish
philosopher Emmanuel Swedenborg (1 6 8 8 1 7 7 2 ), whose influence is particularly evident in
Blakes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In the 1 7 9 0 s and after, he shifted his poetic voice from
the lyric to the prophetic mode, and wrote a series of long prophetic books,
including Milton and Jerusalem. Linked together by an intricate mythology and symbolism of
Blakes own creation, these books propound a revolutionary new social, intellectual, and ethical
order.
Blake published almost all of his works himself, by an original process in which the poems were
etched by hand, along with illustrations and decorative images, onto copper plates. These plates
were inked to make prints, and the prints were then colored in with paint. This expensive and
labor-intensive production method resulted in a quite limited circulation of Blakes poetry during
his life. It has also posed a special set of challenges to scholars of Blakes work, which has
interested both literary critics and art historians. Most students of Blake find it necessary to
consider his graphic art and his writing together; certainly he himself thought of them as
inseparable. During his own lifetime, Blake was a pronounced failure, and he harbored a good
deal of resentment and anxiety about the publics apathy toward his work and about the financial
straits in which he so regularly found himself. When his self-curated exhibition of his works met
with financial failure in 1 8 0 9 , Blake sank into depression and withdrew into obscurity; he
remained alienated for the rest of his life. His contemporaries saw him as something of an
eccentricas indeed he was. Suspended between the neoclassicism of the 1 8 th century and the

early phases of Romanticism, Blake belongs to no single poetic school or age. Only in the 2 0 th
century did wide audiences begin to acknowledge his profound originality and genius.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience Summary
William Blake published his second collection of poetry, Songs of Innocence, in 1789. He
published it with the accompanying illustrative plates, a feat accomplished through an
engraving and illustrating process of his own design. The publication of Songs of
Innocence began his series of Illuminated Books, in which Blake combined text and
visual artwork to achieve his poetic effect. Blake always intended the poems of Songs of
Innocence to be accompanied by their respective illustrations, making analysis of the
texts alone problematic at times.
While ostensibly about the naivety and simplicity of innocent youth, Songs of Innocenceis
not merely a collection of verses for children. Several of the poems include an ironic tone,
and some, such as The Chimney Sweeper, imply sharp criticism of the society of
Blakes time. Although clearly intended as a celebration of children and of their
unadulterated enjoyment of the world around them, Songs of Innocence is also a
warning to adult readers. Innocence has been lost not simply through aging, but because
the forces of culture have allowed a hope-crushing society to flourish, sometimes at the
direct expense of childrens souls.
Songs of Experience followed five years later, bound with a reprinting and slight revision
of Songs of Innocence. Songs of Experience has never been printed separately from the
former volume, and Blake intended it as a companion piece to the earlier work. The same
method of engraving plates to illustrate the poems is used in Songs of Experience.
Songs of Experience allows Blake to be more direct in his criticism of society. He attacks
church leaders, wealthy socialites, and cruel parents with equal vehemence. Blake also
uses Songs of Experience to further develop his own personal theological system, which
was portrayed as mostly very traditional in Songs of Innocence. InSongs of Experience,
Blake questions how we know that God exists, whether a God who allows poor children to
suffer and be exploited is in fact, good, and whether love can exist as an abstract
concept apart from human interaction. Blake also hints at his belief in free love in this
volume, suggesting that he would like to dismantle the institution of marriage along with
all other artificial restrictions on human freedom.
Both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience contain poems that are interdependent.
A critical reading of The Lamb, for example, is impossible without also reading the
Introduction, The Shepherd, and Night from Songs of Innocence. Its meaning is
further deepened when reading The Tyger from Songs of Experience, and vice versa.
Taken as a whole, Blakes Songs of Innocence and of Experience offer a romanticized yet
carefully thought out view of nature, God, society, and religion from a variety of
perspectives, ultimately demanding that the reader choose the view he or she finds most
compelling from among the myriad voices of the poems.

About Songs of Innocence and of Experience

With Songs of Innocence, published in 1789, Blake introduced a new method of printing
his own books. Blake would print his poems by hand onto copper plates, illustrate each
poem with drawings, and then color the prints by hand. Blake claimed to have received
this idea from the spirit of his recently deceased brother Robert. Most of Blakes work
from that point on was printed using this method.
Blake moved to Lambeth from London in 1790, the same year he published his prose
work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. This time also marks his shift from career as

professional engraver to a more meditative writer as he developed his own mythology.

His work expressed his belief that freedom and independence, including sexual freedom
and independence from authority, were paramount. In 1794, Blake published Songs of
Experience, which contrasts with the childlike naivety of his earlier Songs of
Innocence.Songs of Experience brings in a dark and cynical tone that laments the
destruction of innocence by modern society. The following year he republished both
volumes together as Songs of Innocence and of Experience, essentially creating a single
volume of poetry that has persisted in this form up to the present day.

Major Themes
The Destruction of Innocence
Throughout both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, Blake repeatedly
addresses the destruction of childlike innocence, and in many cases of children's lives, by
a society designed to use people for its own selfish ends. Blake romanticizes the children
of his poems, only to place them in situations common to his day, in which they find their
simple faith in parents or God challenged by harsh conditions. Songs of Experience is an
attempt to denounce the cruel society that harms the human soul in such terrible ways,
but it also calls the reader back to innocence, through Imagination, in an effort to
redeem a fallen world.
Redemption
Throughout his works, Blake frequently refers to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
While he alludes to the atoning act of Christ Crucified, more often Blake focuses on the
Incarnation, the taking on of human form by the divine Creator, as the source of
redemption for both human beings and nature. He emphasizes that Christ "became a
little child" just as men and women need to return to a state of childlike grace in order to
restore the innocence lost to the social machinery of a cruel world.
Religious Hypocrisy
In such poems as "Holy Thursday" and "The Little Vagabond," Blake critiques the
religious leaders of his day for their abuse of spiritual authority. The men who should be
shepherds to their flocks are in fact reinforcing a political and economic system that turns
children into short-lived chimney sweepers and that represses love and creative
expression in adults. Blake has no patience with clergy who would assuage their own or
their earthly patrons' guilt by parading poor children through a church on Ascension Day,
as in "Holy Thursday" from both sections, and he reserves most of his sharpest verse for
these men.
Imagination over Reason
Blake is a strong proponent of the value of human creativity, or Imagination, over
materialistic rationalism, or Reason. As a poet and artist, Blake sees the power of art in
its various forms to raise the human spirit above its earth-bound mire. He also sees the
soul-killing materialism of his day, which uses rational thought as an excuse to
perpetuate crimes against the innocent via societal and religious norms. Songs of
Experience in particular decries Reason's hold over Imagination, and it uses several ironic
poems to undermine the alleged superiority of rationalism.
Blake was not opposed to intelligent inquiry, however. In "A Little Boy Lost" from Songs
of Experience, Blake admires the boy's inquiries into the nature of God and his own
Thought, even as he sharply criticizes the religious leaders of his day for demanding
mindless obedience to dogma.

Nature as the Purest State of Man

Like many of his contemporary Romantic poets, Blake sees in the natural world an idyllic
universe that can influence human beings in a positive manner. Many of his poems, such
as "Spring," celebrate the beauty and fecundity of nature, while others, such as
"London," deride the sterile mechanism of urban society. Blake's characters are happiest
when they are surrounded by natural beauty and following their natural instincts; they
are most oppressed when they are trapped in social or religious institutions or are
subject to the horrors of urban living.
The Flaws of Earthly Parents
One recurring motif in both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience is the failure of
human parents to properly nurture their children. The "Little Boy Lost" is abandoned by
his earthly father, yet rescued by his Heavenly Father. The parents of "The Little
Vagabond" weep in vain as their son is burned alive for heresy. Both mother and father
seem frustrated by their child's temperament in "Infant Sorrow." This recurring motif
allows Blake to emphasize the frailty of human communities, in which the roles of mother
and father are defined by society rather than by natural instincts, and to emphasize the
supremacy of Nature and of divine care in the form of God the Father.
Social Reform
While much of Blake's poetry focuses on leaving behind the material world in favor of a
more perfect spiritual nature, his poetry nonetheless offers realistic and socially
conscious critiques of existing situations. Both of his "Chimney Sweeper" poems highlight
the abuse of children by parents and employers as they are forced into hazardous, and
potentially fatal, situations for the sake of earning money. Both "Holy Thursday" poems
decry the overt display of the poor as a spectacle of absolution for the wealthy and
affluent. "The Human Abstract" points out that our virtues are predicated on the
existence of human suffering. Although Blake is certainly more spiritually than practically
minded, the seeds of social reform can be seen in the philosophy underlying his verses:
innocence is a state of man that must be preserved, not destroyed, and the social
systems that seek to destroy innocence must be changed or eliminated.

Character List
the Shepherd
Blake's primary persona in Songs of Innocence, the Shepherd is inspired by a boy on a
cloud to write his songs down. The Shepherd writes of Innocence, about lambs and the
Lamb, about nature, and about the experiences of children. The Shepherd is intended as
a (biased) view of the world from a more naive perspective than Blake himself holds.
the Bard
The Bard is Blake's persona for several poems in Songs of Experience. More worldly-wise
than his counterpart, the Shepherd, the Bard is also more a craftsman of words than is
the rustic singer. The Bard also has a prophetic voice and claims to see past, present,
and future all the same.
Tom Dacre
One of the few named characters in Songs of Innocence, Tom Dacre is the young boy
who cries at night after a hard day as a chimney sweeper. He eventually sleeps and has a

dream of an Angel, who reassures him that his present suffering will end one day, and
that he will be welcomed into an afterlife without pain.
the Little Black Boy
A character from the poem of the same title, the Black Boy is used by Blake to critique
"hope for the future" religious and social beliefs and also to point out the flaws of racism.
The Little Black Boy at first dislikes his dark complexion in contrast to the white English
boys, but is assured by his mother that all outward appearances will fall away one day,
leaving only the pure (but white) souls to enjoy the love of God.
the School Boy
The School Boy typifies the desire of youth to be outdoors without restrictions, despite
the confines of institutionalized education. He speaks of the drudgery he must undertake
to be in school and compares it to the wonders he might experience outside on a
summer's day.
the Lost Little Boy
A recurring character (possibly different characters), the Little Boy who is lost appears in
two poems from Songs of Innocence and in one poem in Songs of Experience. In each
case, Blake uses the character to point out the failure of parents and of society to meet
the needs of the children, and also the harm which blind religious devotion often entails.
In Songs of Innocence, the Little Boy is rescued by God and finds comfort with his
mother; in Songs of Experience he is discovered by a Priest as he questions his
apprehension of God, and he is eventually burned alive for his alleged heresy.
the Lost Little Girl
The Lost Little Girl appears in Songs of Experience as a counterpoint to the "Little Boy
Lost" of Songs of Innocence. She is pursued by her parents through the desert in which
she wanders, but a lion and a lioness find her and bring her to their cave for safety. The
poem suggests that they may have killed her in order to free her from her earthly
suffering.