Songs of Innocence and of Experience

[Angel]

SONGS
of
Innocence
and of
Experience

Songs of innocence was etched in 1789 by William Blake.


Innocence is the state of soul in which, in these poems, is represented by the naïve outlook of the child who believes what he is told by his elders, and takes appearance for the reality and the best aspect of things for the whole truth.



But children need to grow up, and the state of innocence needs to yield to that of experience, which sees as real the world of materialism, poverty, oppression, prostitution, disease and war, epitomized in the ghastly city of modern London. Some of the individual songs of innocence have a matched counterpart of “contrary” in a terrifying song of experience; thus the meek lamb is replaced by the flaming wrathful tiger. In Blakes later writings the “contrary states” become a dialect of contraries, according to which naïve innocence must necessarily pass through and assimilate the opposing state of experience if it is to move on, by an act of imagination, to the third state, comprehending but transcending both the others, which he called “organized innocence”.

source: The Norton Anthology of English Literature; 4th ed.

[Angel]

from: Songs of Innocence

Introduction

Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:

'Pipe a song about a Lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again.'
So I piped: he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.

'Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.'
So he vanished from my sight;
And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.

1789



from: Songs of Experience

Introduction

Hear the voice of the Bard,
Who present, past, and future, sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walked among the ancient trees;

Calling the lapsed soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might control
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!

'O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass!
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumbrous mass.

'Turn away no more;
Why wilt thou turn away?
The starry floor,
The watery shore,
Is given thee till the break of day.'

1794