Typically Blake's Songs of Innocence is understood to be a selection of poems for children. Perhaps this is not quite the case. Blake seems to state that it is not the child who must be led into the world of the educator, but the educator who needs to be led into the world of the child. But the innocence here is not that which is apparent through an adult consciousness. Instead, Blake's Songs have simple form, style, and rhythm, which suggest songs of children. This is seen in the role reversal in Blake's ‘Introduction’ to Songs of Innocence where Piper obeys the command of the child.
Perhaps the only truly adult viewpoint in Songs of Innocence comes in ‘Holy Thursday’.
Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two and two in red and blue and green
Grey headed beadles walked before them with wands white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow.
The children are described as having "innocent faces", the beadles as having ‘wands white as snow’. ‘...they like Thames water flow’, this is a rather a rather hidden reference to innocence and purity.
Blake looked at the child with the eyes of a natural philosopher. Man is made in God's own image, and as any man discovers another, so he also discovers God. This religious philosophy is also part of Blake's feelings on childhood.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
In ‘The Schoolboy’, Blake identifies a bird in conjunction with the image of the child. In the poem, the child loves to be outside in the summer, when the birds are singing all around, but going to school takes joy away.
How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How cans a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?
Another poem in Songs of Experience, which support the rights of children in a harsh adult society, include ‘Holy Thursday’. This poem protests against social restraints imposed on restricted children.
Another poem, which follows this theme, is ‘The Chimney Sweeper’, also from Songs of Experience. Here Blake uses the voice of a child, who suffers from social injustice, to cry out against the neglect of children’s well being.
'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.'
Here we see a bit of an echo of the feelings of the most revolutionary writers of the times, specifically Paine.
In so many of the poems in Songs of Experience, there is a theme of freedom from the institutions of society. The church itself is not absent from those institutions under attack. In ‘The Little Vagabond’, Blake tells of the spiritual neglect of the church.
Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold;
But the Alehouse is healthy, and pleasant, and warm.
Besides, I can tell where I am used well;
The poor parsons with wind like a blown bladder swell.
The naive child points out the difference between the bleakness of the church and the warmth of the alehouse, and we see how out of touch the church has been with the masses. Protests had already begun against the traditional curriculum in many schools, and there was want of a closer relationship between priests and parishioners, with intelligible sermons. The child in ‘The Little Vagabond’ notices that parsons are lacking in the ability to attract and comfort souls. However, if the church reorganised and reformed it’s administration, all men would be happy.
And God, like a father, rejoicing to see
His children as pleasant and happy as he,
Would have no more quarrels with the Devil or the barrel,
But kiss him, and give him both drink and apparel.
Blake seems to believe in the power of nature over the power of man. He is against the church, the school, and any other institution that takes nature out of the child, and thus makes a mockery of God's creation.
Blake's writings have a child-like enthusiasm, inspired by High Christian teachings. Blake used the vocabulary, which was available, thus we read words like, ‘Shepherd’, ‘Lamb’, ‘God’, ‘Angel’, ‘Heaven’, ‘Father’, and ‘Maker’. Though these words do have a Christian slant, Blake does not necessarily use them in their traditional sense. The children in Blake's poetry speak of their ‘maker’ as of a friend; not mentioning the idea of an external ‘God’.
Though many may think this sentiment Blasphemy, coupled with Blake's denouncement of the institutional ‘church’, however the children’s uneducated acceptance of God as one of their own kind, which Blake's children express, is a sign of natural worship, and this idea fits in very well with Blake's natural religion.
