Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Summary

Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, is William Blake's collection of short lyrics, first issued as Songs of Innocence in 1789 and combined with Songs of Experience in 1794. Blake printed the poems himself by relief etching on copper plates, then coloured each page by hand with his wife Catherine, so that every poem is also a picture; this edition gives the text alone. Songs of Innocence opens with a piper who, at the request of a child on a cloud, pipes a song about a lamb and then writes his songs in a book that every child may joy to hear. The poems that follow are spoken mostly by children or by loving adults: The Lamb, in which a child tells a lamb that its maker is Christ, who calls Himself a Lamb; The Little Black Boy, The Chimney-Sweeper, in which a little sweep dreams of an angel freeing the boys from their coffins of soot; The Divine Image, which finds God in Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love; Holy Thursday, describing charity children singing in St Paul's; and the Cradle Song, Night and On Another's Sorrow. Songs of Experience answers these with a darker voice. The Bard calls fallen Earth to awake; Holy Thursday asks whether it is holy to see babes reduced to misery in a rich land; the experienced Chimney-Sweeper complains that his parents have gone to church to praise God while he labours; The Sick Rose is destroyed by an invisible worm; The Tiger asks whether He who made the lamb made the fearful beast; London hears the mind-forged manacles in every cry; and A Poison Tree shows how hidden anger grows into murder. The two series are meant to be read together: innocence is not ignorance but trust, and experience exposes the cruelty of a society that exploits children while claiming to be Christian. Blake's own faith was intense and unconventional, but the Songs draw constantly on the Bible and on the image of Christ the Lamb. They are among the most widely taught poems in English and an ideal introduction to the art of reading paired poems against each other.

Top Lessons

• Reading pairs

  Many poems have partners in the other series. Meaning grows when they are read together.

• Christ the Lamb

  The Lamb answers its own question: the Maker is the One who calls Himself a Lamb.

• Social conscience

  Experience exposes child labour and poverty in a Christian nation.

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