Songs Of Innocence and Experience - William Blake

William Blake (1757 – 1827) is possibly one of the most cherished poets the English language has ever brought forth. Blake has been called a seer, a prophet, a maniac, a visionary, a spokesman and an artist: but he was also a poet.

To give a feeling of his entire work would be an incredibly difficult feat and I am certainly not qualified in any way to do so, not least because I struggle to read some of the famous “prophetic” poetry, just as many of us do in these most irreligious of days. However, I do have enormous respect for the man and his work and the sheer enormity of influence his work has had on the centuries that followed his death.

“Jerusalem”, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, “Milton” and “The Book of Urizen” have arguably had the most intellectual power and influence. Of all his works these are some of the big-hitters that speak to the grand themes of eternity and damnation, to religion and to false gods, and blast away existing tenets with confidence.

Yet “Songs of Innocence and Experience” (1794) are now far better known, most probably because they are more immediately accessible and can be read on many different levels and can therefore be taught at a variety of different years in schools.

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The subtitle to “Songs of Innocence and Experience” is “Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul” and if you can keep this simple phrase in mind as you work through the nineteen “Songs of Innocence” and the twenty-eight “Songs of Experience” then you can’t go far wrong. The important word is “Contrary”, for Blake does not offer us these two states in isolation from each other, in an over-simplified dualist world-view; rather he offers us these two states as vying for attention, for jostling for position as we live our lives. Over and over again as you read the poems you will be aware of the tiniest baby being aware that innocence will pass and something else will come into fruition, just as the experienced old man will look back at both the advantages and importantly the disadvantages of the innocence he once had.

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The “Songs if Innocence” are generally vulnerable, fragile and beautifully simplistic. They would seem to be spoken to us in the voice of the child thus:

“Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life & bid thee feed
By the steam & o’er the mead;”
(from “The Lamb”)

So there is little feeling of movement in the poems and they are generally rather short, happy, hopeful and representative of just one moment, or just one state of being:

“I have no name;
I am but two days old.”
(from “Infant Joy”)

So we have small children, hope, innocence, some interactions with the divine (in the forms of lambs etc) and notions of joy and happiness. “Songs of Innocence” can almost be read as a view of Utopia – if it weren’t for the other-worldliness just out of our line of sight which pushes into this sweet landscape with some slight sense of foreboding: of an awareness of sorrow and an inkling of the transitory nature of innocence.

It is generally agreed that Blake was no big fan of Wordsworth and a comparison of their views of innocence gives us some insight into why that might have been. Wordsworth famously felt that “The child is the father of the man…”, that is, that innocence is in some sense the ultimate condition, and that which is closest to God. Blake would have seen this as a simplistic and ultimately unhelpful and useless view.

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It is interesting that, taken alone, some of the “Songs of Experience” almost appear to us in the wrong category, for they are just as uplifting, charming and essentially innocent as the “Songs of Innocence”. Others answer “Innocent” counter-parts, but never does the “Experienced” nurse, for example, correct the illusions of the first and in some senses can be seen to be more constrained by the “mind-forg’d manacles” than their alternatives.

If we could allow the power and sheer energy of the tiger to live alongside the gentle lamb in a world in which they could co-exist then wouldn’t we be so much the richer? Or if the far-sighted Eagle and the short-sighted Owl could compliment each other’s strengths and join together would they not be the stronger for it? I am back yet again to that thought of Blake’s about one not competing with another but enriching our lives by living side by side.

The “Experienced” world gives us some problems and some sadness:

“I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.”
(from “A Poison Tree”)

“Struggling in my father’s hands,
Striving against my swaddling bands,
Bound and weary, I thought best
To sulk upon my mother’s breast.”
(from “Infant Sorrow”)

Yet the ones that I return to most frequently are the “Songs of Experience” that celebrate the complexity of all these various attributes, problems, issues and experiences in the great big cornucopia that we all know is real life. Blake has the real genius to be able to distil that complexity down to just a few lines, just a symbol here and a simile there:

“The Lilly”

"The modest rose puts forth a thorn,
The humble Sheep a threat’ning horn;
Wile the Lilly white shall in Love delight
Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.”

So the Clod can build a “Heaven in Hell’s despair”, and the Pebble can build a “Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

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William Blake is ultimately deserving of his exalted place in our history and it would be mad of me to attempt to explain his writing style by any other means than by quoting it. Yet where he will always be known for his prophetic imagination and dramatic poetic treatises, “Songs of Innocence and Experience” allow us an introduction to him that is often pastoral, always gentle, succinct and lyrical.

Even in these agnostic times Blake’s world view is a fascinating discourse on the human condition and still insists that you look inside your own soul to see how you live up to his hopes, beliefs and ideals. Each is readable in a parabolic way, as a child would read them which belies a complexity which lives just below the surface. The poems are always tightly written, succinct and beautifully crafted.

If you have never had the opportunity to read Blake take a look here and I defy you to be disappointed.