Songs of Innocence and Song of Experience appears to be very simplistic on first reading. Explain how the poems are in fact a much more complex exploration of Blake(TM)s beliefs and times.

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Songs of Innocence and Song of Experience appears to be very simplistic on first reading. Explain how the poems are in fact a much more complex exploration of Blake’s beliefs and times.

William Blake lived from 1757 – 1827 in London. He was primarily an engraver then painter until later writing his famous poems. In his childhood he was educated at home although he later attended a drawing school, Henry Pars’ and was an autodidact. Blake also claimed to have visions, most notably a vision when he saw and conversed with the Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel. In 1779, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy in Old Somerset House. His studies required no payment but he was expected to supply his own materials throughout the six years he would stay.

He married in 1783 to Catherine Boucher, based solely on love and to this day is defined as a romantic poet.

He was Associated with the Romantics because he had similar ideas that the imagination was very important. Byron, Shelly and Coleridge believed that the imagination was important – much more then rational thought. They were all against industrialisation of the countryside. The Romantics were an artistic movement which started in the 1770s through the Industrialisation of Europe continuing into the early Victorian period. They were classed here because of certain shared beliefs. The Romantics disliked the effects of the Industrial revolution. They lived during the civil war of America and the French revolution, due to the sudden questioning in the role of Monarchy and Church.

William Blake produced poems, most notably the two companion poems of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. One of his beliefs was that innocence is something good and generally saw experience as a bad thing. Evidence shows from his poems that he detested the expansion of industrialisation and very much liked the countryside as well as his deep religious attitude. Songs of Innocence and Experience was written in 1790. The main theme Blake stressed was that a child remains innocent in his or her youth. The songs of Innocence are written in a child’s point of view. They still strive strong even though there is evil around them. Blake felt as you grew older you lost that innocence as you gained more experience. The songs of Experience are written in an experienced point of view, which had realised the true evil around him or her and hated it.        

The first two examples are the lamb from Songs of innocence and the Tyger from songs of experience. Firstly, the lamb consists of two stanzas with five rhyming couplets. The Lamb is about innocence and Blake utilises the symbolism of a child to emphasize the theme. “He is meek & he is mild”. A lamb is a small, timid and weak animal and can portray innocence and peacefulness, properties we can associate with a child.  It may also have deeper meaning, such as the Lamb of God. It was Jesus who became known as the Lamb of God because as the Jewish faith believes, sacrificing a lamb would take away your sins. The Christians saw Jesus as acting like a lamb so he could take away everyone’s sins after becoming crucified, an image which shows self-sacrifice and innocence. Blake, who has a passion for religion gives praise to God for creation of a creature like the Lamb. The alliteration of “Little Lamb gives the effect of softening the tone and adding to the imagery of innocence and possibly Blake tried to make the Lamb seem like a Nursery Rhyme, which portrays the poem being narrated by a child, therefore linking back to the theme of innocence.  

In the Tyger, the poem consists of six stanza’s, with two rhyming couplets in each stanza. The Tyger is about experience and Blake utilises this using industrial and colour imagery like in the fourth stanza such as “what the hammer” or in the first stanza “forests of the night”. The Tyger needs experience to survive, as it needs to kill to live. Blake is questioning God “What immortal hand or eye, / could frame thy fearful symmetry to why God would want to make animals like tigers, such as mankind. This is one of Blake’s rhetorical questions throughout the poem. The “immortal hand” refers to the power of God to create. The “fearful symmetry” refers to the complexity in the tyger by the divine artistry, almost being so perfect as to be fearful to understand. Blake saw the Tyger as a very intricate animal, asking how God created it, “In what furnace was thy brain / What the anvil,”.

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The comparisons between the two is that the Lamb has pastoral imagery, such as language, “Vale”, “mead”, “stream”, This helps the reader picture a pastoral scene. This was the ideal life of William Blake, evidence for his want for the time before the industrial revolution. The Tyger has industrial imagery, “furnace”, “hammer”, “anvil”, to show how the Tyger is made as if it were in a factory. This imagery shows a pessimistic view of the Tyger. Blake does this because of his hate of industrialisation and saw it as an impurity to the countryside. In the penultimate stanza of ...

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