Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
“Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.” (1794)
Introduction: In the poems of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, Blake contrasts how the human spirit blossoms when allowed its own free movement, which he calls a state of “innocence,” and how it turns in on itself after it has been suppressed and forced to conform to rules, systems, and doctrines, which he calls a state of “experience.” The two states recall one of the principal events in the Judeo-Christian story, the fall from innocence caused by Adam and Eve when they eat fruit from the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. The poison tree of Blake’s poem suggests that biblical tree. Thus Blake reflects the literary group to which he belongs in his exploration of death. Yet in many ways Blake’s poetry is unlike the work of his contemporaries. Some critics see Blake not as much of the romantic period as anticipating it. These readers may see Songs of Innocence and Experience as more like late eighteenth-century children’s poetry than the lyrical ballads Wordsworth wrote. Others emphasize Blake’s uniqueness, stressing his dissimilarity to other artists of his time. Indeed, Blake asserted the importance of originality, of not being trapped by someone else’s system of thought or artistic expression. Nonetheless, for most readers, Blake represents romanticism in its purest form. His visions and prophecies, his use of heightened states of emotion, his opposition to social oppression and to the hypocrisy of church and state, and his focus on ordinary low-class people and their experience, all of these align Blake with what literary scholars later called romanticism.
Songs of Innocence:
1- 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 chear,
Piper pipe that song again—
So I piped, he wept to hear.
Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing
thy songs of happy chear,
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 vanish'd from my sight.
And I pluck'd a hollow reed
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
Following poetic convention, Blake sets the scene for his collection in this first poem. He envisions himself as a shepherd “Piping down the valleys wild,” who encounters a child “On a cloud” (line 3) who encourages him to play a song “about a Lamb.” After hearing the music, the child asks the shepherd to drop his pipe and sing the words to the song. After enjoying the lyrics, the child tells the shepherd to “write/In a book that all may read” the songs he has created. So he sits down, makes a pen from the materials at hand, and begins to write “my happy songs,/Every child may joy to hear.”
2- The Lamb
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee;
Gave thee life and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight, 5
Softest clothing, wooly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee? 10
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee, Little Lamb,
I’ll tell thee: He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek and He is mild.
One of Blake’s most celebrated poems from his collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience, “The Lamb” subtly approaches the subject of creativity and creator alike. While on the surface Blake’s narrator seems to be speaking of the life of a real, physical lamb, in the end one realizes he is layering meaning with subtext derived from both Christian and classical mythology. The lamb is also a symbol of Jesus Christ, both as a child and as a physical incarnation of the deity. The child is both a creation of God and a lamb, one of God’s flock. Blake begins with a simple image and approaches it from differing angles to give the reader a better understanding of his vision of the nature of Divine Creation.
Songs of Experience:
1-“The Tyger”
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
The poem begins with the speaker asking a fearsome tiger what kind of divine being could have created it: “What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame they fearful symmetry?” Each subsequent stanza contains further questions, all of which refine this first one. The speaker wonders how, once that horrible heart “began to beat,” its creator would have had the courage to continue the job. Comparing the creator to a blacksmith, he ponders about the anvil and the furnace that the project would have required and the smith who could have wielded them.
2- “London”
I wander thro’ each
charter’d street, Near where the
charter’d Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every black’ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro’ midnight streets
I hear How the youthful Harlots
curse Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
The speaker wanders through the streets of London and comments on his observations. He sees despair in the faces of the people he meets and hears fear and repression in their voices. The woeful cry of the chimney-sweeper stands as a chastisement to the Church, and the blood of a soldier stains the outer walls of the monarch’s residence. The nighttime holds nothing more promising: the cursing of prostitutes corrupts the newborn infant and sullies the “Marriage hearse.
3- The Chimney Sweeper
A little black thing among the snow,
Crying "'weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother?
Say!"-- "They are both gone up to
the church to pray. Because
I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."
In 'The Chimney Sweeper' of Innocence, Blake can be interpreted to criticize the view of the Church that through work and hardship, reward in the next life would be attained; this results in an acceptance of exploitation observed in the closing lines 'if all do their duty they need not fear harm.' Interestingly, Blake uses this poem to highlight the dangers of an innocent, naive view, demonstrating how this allows the societal abuse of child labor. In Experience, 'The Chimney Sweeper' further explores this flawed perception of child labor in a corrupt society. The poem shows how the Church's teachings of suffering and hardship in this life in order to attain heaven are damaging, and 'make up a heaven' of the child's suffering, justifying it as holy. Interestingly, the original questioner of the child ('Where are thy father and mother'?) offers no help or solution to the child, demonstrating the impact these corrupt teachings have had on society as a whole