Songs of Innocence and of Experience





Songs of Innocence and of Experience is an illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. "Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton's existential-mythic states of "Paradise" and the "Fall." Blake's categories are modes of perception that tend to coordinate with a chronology that would become standard in Romanticism: childhood is a time and a state of protected "innocence," but not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. This world sometimes impinges on childhood itself, and in any event becomes known through "experience," a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes. The volume's "Contrary States" are sometimes signaled by patently repeated or contrasted titles: in Innocence, Infant Joy, in Experience, Infant Sorrow; in Innocence, The Lamb, in Experience, The Fly and The Tyger.

Songs of Innocence
Songs of Innocence was originally a complete work first printed in 1789. It is a conceptual collection of 19 poems, engraved with artwork.

The poems are each listed below:
 * Introduction
 * The Shepherd
 * The Echoing Green
 * The Lamb
 * The Little Black Boy
 * The Blossom
 * The Chimney Sweeper
 * The Little Girl lost
 * The Little Girl found
 * The Little Boy lost
 * The Little Boy found
 * Laughing Song
 * A Cradle Song
 * The Divine Image
 * Holy Thursday
 * Night
 * Spring
 * Nurse's Song
 * Infant Joy
 * A Dream
 * On Another's Sorrow

Songs of Experience
Songs of Experience is a 1794 poetry collection of 26 poems forming the second part of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Some of the poems, such as The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found were moved by Blake to Songs of Innocence, and were frequently moved between the two books.

In this collection of poems, Blake contrasts Songs of Innocence, in which he shows how the human spirit blossoms when allowed its own free movement with Songs of Experience, in which he shows how the human spirit withers after it has been suppressed and forced to conform to rules, and doctrines. In fact, Blake was an English Dissenter and actively opposed the doctrines of the Anglican Church, which tells its members to suppress their feelings. Blake showed how he believed this was wrong through his poems in Songs of Experience.

The most notable of the poems in Songs of Experience are: "The Tyger", "The Sick Rose", "Ah, Sunflower," "A Poison Tree" and "London". Although these poems today are enjoyed and appreciated, in Blake's time, they were not appreciated at all. Blake lived this whole life in poverty and in heavy debt. Songs of Experience only sold 20 copies before his death in 1827. It is now used in the school GCSE and A-level curriculum.


 * Introduction (at wikisource)
 * Earth's Answer
 * The Clod and the Pebble
 * Holy Thursday
 * The Little Girl Lost
 * The Little Girl Found
 * The Chimney Sweeper
 * Nurse's Song
 * The Sick Rose
 * The Fly (at wikisource)
 * The Angel
 * The Tyger
 * My Pretty Rose Tree
 *  Ah! Sun-Flower (at wikisource)
 * The Lily
 * The Garden of Love
 * The Little Vagabond
 * London
 * The Human Abstract (at wikisource)
 * Infant Sorrow
 * A Poison Tree
 * A Little Boy Lost (at wikisource)
 * A Little Girl Lost
 * To Tirzah
 * The Schoolboy (at wikisource)
 * The Voice of the Ancient Bard (at wikisource)

Musical settings
Poems from both books have been set to music by many composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sven-David Sandström, and Benjamin Britten. Individual poems have also been set by, among others, John Tavener, Jah Wobble, Tangerine Dream. A modified version of the poem "The Little Black Boy" was set to music in the song "My Mother Bore Me" from Maury Yeston's musical Phantom. Folk musician Greg Brown recorded sixteen of the poems on his 1987 album Songs of Innocence and of Experience and by Finn Coren in his Blake Project.

Poet Allen Ginsberg believed the poems were originally intended to be sung, and that through study of the rhyme and meter of the works, a Blakean performance could be approximately replicated. In 1969, he conceived, arranged, directed, sang on, and played piano and harmonium for an album of songs entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg (1970).

The composer William Bolcom completed a setting of the entire collection of poems in 1984. In 2005, a recording of Bolcom's work by Leonard Slatkin, the Michigan State Childrens Choir, and the University of Michigan on the Naxos label won 3 Grammy Awards: Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Best Classical Album.