In the second verse in the “Innocence” version the boy’s “head curled like a lamb’s back” which links to the symbolism of the lamb being the son of God which is one of the main themes in another poem from “Songs of Innocence “the Lamb”. The Lamb is a prime example of innocence imagery because it is used in such a context as to promote the idea that the lamb symbolises not only pastoral imagery but Christ as the lamb of God. The boys hair is described as “white” to represent purity and innocence but then colour imagery is used to emphasise dark and light, good and bad. In “The Chimney Sweeper” (Experience) the boys appearance is described yet in a different way to that of the innocence poem, his health is described first as “happy” but this is talked about in the past tense. Blake is touching on the illnesses Chimney Sweepers got, such as cancer. His clothes are then described metaphorically as “Clothes of death” which when put into context of the work he was doing tells the reader that the clothes he is wearing to work symbolise his status and remind the reader that this job was very hazardous and also is describing the soot on his body. This again links into the poem “The lamb” where the clothes are described as “Softest clothing woolly bright” which has no indication of death by of life. This shows the difference between life and death as in most Chimney Sweepers lives death came upon them unnaturally quickly.
Some children that were not put into the trade of chimney sweeping then they would instead be educated (if their parents possessed the money) and if not the children were sent to Charity schools. These were schools that were established by mainly religious organisations and were used to educate children until they could be put into a trade. These schools were often cruel institutions. Blake uses the subject of Charity Schools for one of his sets of poems entitled “Holy Thursday”. The title “Holy Thursday” comes from the British celebration of Jesus’ ascension. In the first line (of the Innocence version) it mentions the children who were in this school as having “innocent faces clean” showing immediately that Blake found them to be innocent. The second line has a Bible reference to Noah’s ark; “the children walking two & two” makes them sound more like animals and is also reminding the reader that just like Noah’s animals they were the future of Blake’s Britain. It also signifies that they were the future of the world as were the animals in Noah’s ark. From his poems we can somewhat assume that Blake found Charity schools to be a money making scheme. This is proved by his view on the so called “religious people” who ran the schools. In the second line the masters are described as having “wands as white as snow” which shows them as having power because although white is generally used to show innocence in this case the word “snow” contradicts this as Blake often used snow to symbolise cold, dark and evil ambitions and scenarios. London is also mentioned in the first verse by the “high dome of Pauls” and the “Thames water” which in those days was very dirty, but was an integral part of London as were the children. Blake uses religious imagery within the innocence version quite a bit towards the end. “A mighty wind…[raised] to heaven”, is used to create an idea based around the children’s voices as if they were crying so loud that heaven could hear them. The owners are described as “wise guardians”, which is ironic and patronising as Blake actually is meaning that they are horrible and cruel and have no knowledge what so ever.
In the experience version of “Holy Thursday” Blake puts forwards different ideas. He starts off by talking about the “fruitful” children which are then “reduced to misery”. This symbolises them coming into the schools cheerful and full of happiness and then being shafted out woeful. The representation of children to money is also used by calling them “rich”. This has been used to remind the reader that Blake saw the owners of these schools as money hungry and the only reason they did it was for the money. In the second verse Blake talks of the feelings of the children as “trembling [cries]”, the meaning of this is to show that the children were desperate as they were “children poor?”. Pastoral imagery is used in this version not to represent innocence to the destruction of innocence via experience “Field are bleak and bare”. This shows that after the schools the children had lost their innocence, stripped of it, and there was and is nothing they could do about it, “It is eternal winter there” shows the eternal evil within the schools.
From this anger of London via the chimney sweeps and charity schools we find even more anger within Blake’s poem “A Poison Tree”. This poem expresses Blake’s anger and hatred for things in general. The last verse of this poem sums up what happened to the innocence of the children “And into my garden stole”-It had been stolen.
“A Poison Tree” is another poem from Blake’s “Songs of Experience”. It follows a different rhyming pattern compared to other poems written by Blake. It uses the rhyming patter “a,a, b,b “ whereas other poems generally used “a,b,a,b”. This change in rhyme immediately hits the reader and also makes the poem more alive with passion due to the flow of the rhythm. The first lines holds a contradiction “I was angry with my friend”, it forces the reader to ask the question of why the person is angry with their friend, it insights them to read on. It talks of how the person in the poem tell his friend why he is angry with him and because of this “[his] wrath did end”. On the other hand when it comes to being ,“angry with [his]..foe”, he did not say anything and so the ,“wrath did grow”. The meaning of this first verse is to try and show that by keeping anger hidden within other things it does not diminish but grows. This links in to what Blake was doing. He did not openly express his views but concealed his anger within his poetry. The second verse talks of “tears” and “smiles” these two opposites show split personality. The meaning of the tears is the water that the “Poison tree” was given and the smiles are the sun. This contradiction makes the tree slowly grow ,“both day and night”. This idea of growth relates to children growing up but being fed with the wrong views which means that they can turn out evil. This view of the, “finished product”, is shown when the tree “bore and apple”. The apple signifies the apple in Genesis and the evil of the world was concealed in this apple. Maybe Blake is trying to say the God was wrong to conceal the evil within one thing and that from it more evil has occurred which is true.
The last link to religion links into Blake’s poem “The Echoing Green” from “Songs of Innocence” which shows a completely different view of the world. This poem also follows the same rhyming pattern of “A Poison Tree” which once again gives it more flow and rhythm. When read, the poem has a sort of “Sing song” feel to it which goes along with the happiness expressed within the poem. It talks of change from innocence to experience. In the second verse Blake talks about a monk “Old John” and then links him to experience with “White hair”. The white described in this verse is a pure white which shows that Blake is not totally against experience. There is alot of repetition in this poem with,” bells”, symbolising religious festivals such as Christmas which tells the reader a little about Blake’s religious life. The repetition emphasis this and makes the reader take it in. Blake also links children with pastoral imagery, “girls and boys… were seen One the Echoing Green” which is used as another way of expressing that the children are innocent.
This idea of pastoral imagery is also shown in two of Blake’s most famous poems “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”. In these two poems Blake uses several imagery techniques. In “The Lamb” he puts forwards the idea of nature via “Stream and O’er the mead”. The idea of nature links into innocence and the fact that the countryside is un-poisoned as it has not been influence by the “hammer”, “Chain” and “furnace” mentioned in “The Tyger” which symbolises the industrial revolution which is William Blake’s view on experience altering innocence. William Blake links the industrial revolution with the, “forests of the night [and] hand or eye”, which is imagery of humans and shadows. As William Blake was a devout Christian in his own way he includes God in his poem of “The Lamb”. In fact God is included in the name of his poem as Jesus was the “lamb of God”.
Blake uses assonance to create subtle rhyming in which the reader can pick up over time. “Softest clothing” is an example of this. The subtle link adds to the effect of beauty that the “Softest clothing” creates. The use of this adds meaning to the poem because clothing is used to cover people and so William Blake might be trying to say that by covering your true self you are loosing the innocence of individuality.
Another effect used in “The Lamb” is the fact that there is not much punctuation. This surprisingly creates a weird flowing nursery rhyme effect. On the other hand in “The Tyger” lots of somewhat harsh punctuation is used to create a pounding rhyme which inspires the reader to imagine the atmosphere of machinery. The reason for the mis-spelling of tiger is because Blake was self taught. This is a good example of differences in class at the time of William Blake.
The poems from “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” have more meaning than the reader might first imagine due to mainly the events that were surrounding their author “William Blake” at the time of their writing. By the harsh reality of London at that time Blake incorporates the Chimney sweeps, Charity schools, London in general and the industrial revolution into his poems. He does not openly state what each poem is about but within in writing we can pick up on ideas and themes that influenced him to write these poems. While reading these poems people pick up on the things happening at the time due to the detail in which they are described in poetry. These poems are not just poems, they are more like Blake’s autobiography on his life through the form of media he liked best, poetry.