WILLIAM BLAKE—seminar assignment

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of poems gathered together in 1794, when Blake
added to his previous volume of Songs of Innocence (1789) a series of other poems, offering a
complementary or completely opposite vision, the Songs of Experience.
Their themes illustrate the Romantic concern with nature, imagination, and freedom, as well as with
childhood as the “golden age” of man. Blake’s poems contain sometimes angry social commentary, the
disappointment of an artist with a world full of oppression, hypocrisy, materialism and greed.
Some of the poems in Songs of Innocence and of Experience are explicitly set in contrast. They may have
the same title, but the vision in them is different. Moreover, the poems in the “Innocence” section are
seldom “innocent” – there are ironies and paradoxes in them, which the more experienced reader can
identify, but of which the speaker doesn’t seem to be aware.
Every student is required to choose one instance of paired poems and write an analysis of 15‒ 20 lines,
pointing out the differences in the poet’s vision.

[For instance, if you choose to examine the contrast between “The Lamb” and “The Tyger,” you should start
from aspects of form and rhetoric (e.g. both poems ask a fundamental question – what is this question?) and
then try to discern the motifs and the themes (and try to see if and how that question is answered in each
poem). One possibility of interpreting the two poems is by starting from the idea that they are both about
creation and the nature of the creator.]

SONGS OF INNOCENCE (1789) SONGS OF EXPERIENCE (1794)

The Lamb The Tyger

Little Lamb who made thee Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,

Dost thou know who made thee In the forests of the night:
Gave thee life and bid thee feed What immortal hand or eye,
By the stream and o'er the mead; Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Gave thee clothing of delight,
In what distant deeps or skies
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Burnt the fire of thine eyes!
Gave thee such a tender voice,
On what wings dare he aspire?
Making all the vales rejoice:
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee? And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
And when thy heart began to beat,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee:
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb: What the hammer? what the chain,
He is meek and he is mild, In what furnace was thy brain?
He became a little child: What the anvil? what dread grasp,
I a child and thou a lamb, Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
We are called by his name.
When the stars threw down their spears
Little Lamb, God bless thee.
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Little Lamb, God bless thee.
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger, Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

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Holy Thursday
‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two in red and blue and green.
Gray headed beadles walked before with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow.
O, what a multitude they seemed these flowers of London town,
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own,
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among;
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
Nurse's Song
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And every thing else is still.
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away,
Till the morning appears in the skies.
No, no, let us play, for it yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky, the little birds fly,
And the hills are all covered with sheep.
Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed.
The little ones leaped and shouted and laugh'd,
And all the hills ecchoed
The Chimney Sweeper
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry weep, weep, weep, weep.
So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep.
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shav'd, so I said:
Hush Tom, never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.
And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight,
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe Ned and Jack,
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black.
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open'd the coffins and set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing they run,
Holy Thursday
Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak and bare.
And their ways are fill'd with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.
For where-e'er the sun does shine,
And where-e'er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
Nurses Song
When the voices of children are heard on the green
And whisperings are in the dale,
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind,
My face turns green and pale.
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Your spring and your day are wasted in play,
And your winter and night in disguise.
The Chimney Sweeper
A little black thing among the snow:
Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!
Where are thy father and mother? say?
They are both gone up to church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil'd among the winter’s snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy and dance and sing
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King,
Who make up a heaven of our misery.
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And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father and never want joy.
And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bag and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm,
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

Infant Joy Infant Sorrow

I have no name My mother groaned! my father wept,

I am but two days old - Into the dangerous world I leapt:
What shall I call thee? Helpless, naked, piping loud;
I happy am Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Joy is my name -
Struggling in my father’s hands:
Sweet joy befall thee!
Striving against my swaddling bands:
Pretty joy! Bound and weary, I thought best
Sweet joy but two days old. To sulk upon my mother’s breast.
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile.
I sing the while
Sweet joy befall thee.

The Little Black Boy The Garden of Love

My mother bore me in the southern wild, I went to the Garden of Love.

And I am black, but O! my soul is white; And saw what I never had seen:
White as an angel is the English child, A Chapel was built in the midst,
But I am black as if bereav'd of light. Where I used to play on the green.
My mother taught me underneath a tree, And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And, sitting down before the heat of day, And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door;
She took me on her lap and kissed me, So I turned to the Garden of Love,
And pointing to the east began to say: That so many sweet flowers bore.
Look on the rising sun: there God does live And I saw it was filled with graves,
And gives his light, and gives his heat away. And tomb-stones where flowers should be,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
Comfort in morning, joy in the noon day. And binding with briars my joys and desires.
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.
Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:
I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our father's knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.
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