Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake - Analysis

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THEMES AND CORRESPONDING QUOTATIONS

Songs of Innocence

Joy
Piping songs of pleasant glee

Children
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear

Meta-art

The white race is superior to the black heathen race
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white

Tolerance
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child

Nature

God

Suffering is temporary, god brings relief

Man as innocent (lambs)

In heaven everyone is the same


Songs of Experience

Meta-art: the poet as see-all, prophet
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word

Criticism about the church
``And because I am happy & dance & sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery.''

Nature as greater than man
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

Criticism about God
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?


REFLECTION
William Blake speaks in Innocence of god as good. He was a religious man but found fault with the English church establishment and he and his family were dissenters. This is reflected in his poetry: in The Chimney Sweep (Experience) the Sweep was originally happy but his church-going parents made him unhappy.

Illustration by William Blake

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