Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Blake's paired visions of the two contrary states of the human soul: "The Lamb", "The Tyger", "London".
What this poem is
Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. Originally, Blake illuminated and bound Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience separately. It was only in 1794 that Blake combined the two sets of poems into a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Even after beginning to print the poems together, Blake continued to produce individual volumes for each of the two sets of poetry.
Blake was also a painter before the creation of Songs of Innocence and of Experience and he engraved, hand-printed, and coloured detailed art to accompany each of the poems in Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This unique art helps tell the story of each poem, and was part of Blake's original vision for how each poem should be understood. Blake was heavily inspired by children's literature and juvenile education in his creation of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and his analysis of childhood as a state of protected innocence rather than original sin, but not immune to the fallen world and its institutions, would soon become a hallmark of Romanticism.
Notably, there has been an abiding relationship between Songs of Innocence and of Experience and musical artists. Poems from the collection have been set to music by a variety of musicians.
Songs of Innocence was originally a complete collection of 23 poems first printed in 1789. Blake etched 31 plates to create the work and produced an estimated seventeen or eighteen copies. This collection mainly shows happy, innocent perception in pastoral harmony, but at times, such as in "The Chimney Sweeper" and "The Little Black Boy", subtly shows the dangers of this naïve and vulnerable state.The poems are listed below:
Adapted from the Wikipedia article “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” (revision 1372890362), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Laurel's own notes and measurements are not from Wikipedia.
Measured across the book
Across its 956 lines, 95% of stressed syllables fall on the beat (95% interval 94% to 96%). Alliteration runs at 0.98 times what shuffling the words would give (0.23 observed against 0.24 expected). 13% of the lines have a feminine ending.
Baselines and intervals are described in the methods.
Contents
About this text
Public domain. Text from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Project Gutenberg ebook #1934. Free to read, print, copy and reuse.