Companion Poems From Songs of Innocence and Experience
The Song’s of Innocence were written in 1789. In 1794, he added the Songs of Experience. Blake says that these two sets of poems are meant to capture “two contrary states of the human soul”. The Songs of Innocence, however, do not completely describe a faultless world. Many of them include cruelty and suffering. Innocence refers to the inner feelings and the purity of the soul rather than social perfection. Likewise, in the Songs of Experience, the same world is described as a much more terrifying one of war, poverty, disease, and social oppression. Although the physical world has not changed, the state of the soul of individuals has, and therefore, the perception of the physical world leads to the difference in the depiction of society. Each poem stands as a separate poem, however, many of the poems in The Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in The Songs of Experience.(1) On this page, we will compare and contrast four sets of contrary poems, and give a brief analysis of each. We have also included many of the illustrations that Blake created to accompany each of the poems. He was an artist, as well as a writer, and published most of his works by himself. He thought that these images were essential to the poetry text, and therefore, we found them important to include.
Introduction.
The Little Boy Lost.
The Chimney Sweeper.
Nurse’s Song.
Some poems from The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience may have the same titles, but the choices of words the William Blake uses help set contrasting tones. As shown, many of The Songs of Innocence are hopeful, innocent, youthful and free from the corruption of society. The Songs of Experience reflect an older, more mature perception of the world and the progression from childhood and innocence to adulthood and experience.
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References
Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Anthology of British Literature, 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Compan, Inc., 2006.
Poem texts taken from http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/BlaSong.html__
Photographs from:
http://www.nimbi.com/william_blake_title_page_song
Back to the William Blake main page.
Contributors
Brooke Vreken
Andrea Dashiell
Andrea Pedicone