SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE. William Blake's 'Songs of Innocence' and 'Songs of Experience' were originally published as separate volumes, with both text and illustrations beautifully en graved after Blake's special method of relief-etching, in 1789 and 1794 respec tively. They were republished together about 1794 under the title of of Innocence and of Experience, Showing Contrary States of the Human Soul.' The contemporary sale of the somewhat expensive volumes was very small.
The lyrics in the collection are full of the symbolism which characterizes all of Blake's writings, but they differ from most of his works in their intellegibility and in the more universal character of their appeal. The 'Songs of In nocence' represent the soul untouched by the experience of evil. To Blake the naive and spontaneous consciousness of childhood was the ideal condition of human nature. Mature ex perience brings with it a separation of the spirit from the quickening and joy-giving con tact with the divine sources of its true being. In his mystical philosophy all things arc a single essence and of that escence the primary attri bute is love.
" For Mercy. Pity. Peace, and Love, Is God our Father dear; And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is man, his child and care." Hence life, as seen in the of Inno cence,' is a continuous manifestation of sym pathy and love in a world of pure joy, where envy, hatred and the consciousness of wrong have no place. Throughout this group the lamb and the child are symbols of innocent happi ness; the shepherd, the nurse, the mother, the angels are the embodiments of all-enfolding love. Directly opposite is the atmosphere of the Songs of Experience.' The two sets of poems are full of correspondences, but in each lyric of the latter group the paradise of inno cence is represented as blighted by the touch of evil. The idea is symbolically expressed in °The Sick Rose" where °the invisible which cankers the bud, is reason, law, experi ence— the death of happiness and instinctive love. The two sorts of love, one spontaneous
and unselfish, the other reasoned and calculat ing, are contrasted in °The Cloud and the Pebble." The failing sense of communion with the divine which comes with the mature con sciousness is expressed in the last stanza of °The Angel": " Soon my Angel came I was armed, he came in vain, For the time of youth was fled And grey hairs were on my head." In his emphasis on intuition and emotion and in his exaltation of the child as the true type of a pure humanity, Blake falls in with the cult of the primary instincts of human nature by the followers of Rousseau and anticipates doctrines familiar in the poetry of Words worth. As a poet he enjoys a more nearly unique position. Sometimes prosaically di dactic, more often wayward and perverse, Blake at times shows himself a lyric genius of exceptional originality and power. The term best describes the effect of such a poem as °The Tiger," with its burning im agery and the on-rushing beat of its rhythm.
Marvelous, too, is the poignancy of °The Sick Rose') and gAh I Sunflower, Weary of Time.° But the more characteristic note is one of tender simplicity, in such pieces as the ((Intro duction° to 'Songs of Innocence' and gThe Lamb,* lyrics which have endeared Blake to all lovers of the poetry of childhood. The most convenient edition and the best critical memoir are to be found in Rossetti, W. M. 'The Poeti cal Works of William Blake' Bohn Library). Consult also Symons, Arthur, (William Blake' (1907), and the essay by Yeats, W. B., in 'Ideas of Good and Evil.' Bibliography in Cambridge 'History of English Literature' (Vol. XI).