Songs of Innocence and Experience

“This book was published in two movements by Blake. First, the Songs of Innocence, which included poems like ‘The Lamb,’ which have a certain innocence. But even in that first collection, that charm is never quite so neat and tidy. There is a world of carefree, playful safety, but also, say in ‘Infant joy,’ an edge that makes you think about the fullness of what it is to care for a baby. So when he subsequently published the Songs of Experience, the coupling of many of the poems, the resonances set up with that first volume, completely made sense. It’s not a jarring shift, as if Blake suddenly grew up and realised that life wasn’t so good. It feels more like the completion of the earlier project. Blake says they describe ‘The Two Contrary States of the Human Soul,’ and lead to a sense of a wider horizon, that we human beings are somehow connected to as well.” Read more...

The best books on William Blake

Mark Vernon, Biographer