Poems of William Blake by William Blake
Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul are two books of poetry by the English poet and painter, William Blake. Although Songs of...
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Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary
States of the Human Soul are two books of poetry by the English
poet and painter, William Blake. Although Songs of Innocence was
first published by itself in 1789, it is believed that Songs of
Experience has always been published in conjunction with Innocence
since its completion in 1794. Songs of Innocence mainly consists of
poems describing the innocence and joy of the natural world,
advocating free love and a closer relationship with God, and most
famously including Blake’s poem The Lamb. Its poems have a
generally light, upbeat and pastoral feel and are typically written
from the perspective of children or written about them. Directly
contrasting this, Songs of Experience instead deals with the loss
of innocence after exposure to the material world and all of its
mortal sin during adult life, including works such as The Tyger.
Poems here are darker, concentrating on more political and serious
themes. Throughout both books, many poems fall into pairs, so that
a similar situation or theme can be seen in both Innocence and
Experience. Many of the poems appearing in Songs of Innocence have
a counterpart in Songs of Experience with opposing perspectives of
the world. The disastrous end of the French Revolution caused Blake
to lose faith in the goodness of mankind, explaining much of the
volume’s sense of despair. Blake also believed that children lost
their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community
which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, believe that
children should be kept from becoming experienced entirely. In
truth, he believed that children should indeed become experienced
but through their own discoveries, which is reflected in a number
of these poems. Blake believed that innocence and experience were
“the two contrary states of the human soul”, and that true
innocence was impossible without experience. The Book of Thel is a
poem by William Blake, dated 1789 and probably worked on in the
period 1788 to 1790. It is illustrated by his own plates, and is
relatively short and easy to understand, compared to his later
prophetic books. The metre is a fourteen-syllable line. It was
preceded by Tiriel, which Blake left in manuscript. A few lines
from Tiriel were incorporated into The Book of Thel. This book
consists of eight plates executed in illuminated printing. 15
copies of original print of 1789-1793 are known. Two copies have
watermark of 1815, which are more elaborately colored than the
others.
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