1. William Blake’s Songs of
Innocence and Experience
Hannah Johnson, Annie McCausland, Cody
Shreffler
2. Life of William Blake
• Blake was born in London in 1757.
• His early education came primarily from his mother at home, where
they read mostly from the Bible.
• Blake was a bit of a “mad man,” and began having visions at an early
age. At the age of ten, he claimed to see the prophet Ezekiel under a
tree full of angels.
• He was interested in art from an early age. He attended drawing
school and at the age of 14 was apprenticed to an engraver. Following
his apprenticeship, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Art.
• In 1782, Blake married his wife, Catherine. He taught her to read,
write, design, and print. She served as his greatest support.
• Blake’s brother, Robert, passed away in 1787 but even in death had a
profound impact on Blake’s work. Blake claimed that his brother
actually showed him a printing method in his dreams that he used for
Songs of Innocence.
3. Alexander Gilchrist’s Biography on Blake
• This work was published in 1863, years after Blake passed away (1827). This was the first
biography written on Blake, and very much shaped what people knew of him and how they
perceived him.
• Gilchrist thoroughly expressed William Blake’s eccentricity, describing some of his strange
practices such as how he and his wife would reenact Paradise Lost in full costume.
• Despite his emphasis on Blake’s madness, Gilchrist has an obvious reverence for Blake’s work.
“For a nobler depth in beauty, with accordant grandeur of sentiment and language,
I know no parallel nor hit elsewhere as such a poem as The Little Black Boy… We
may read these poems again and again, and they continue fresh as at first. There is
something unsating in them, a perfume as of a growing violet, which renews itself as
fast as it is inhaled.”
4. • Gilchrist quotes Robert Browning’s Pictor
Ignotus. Pictor ignotus means “unknown
figure.”
• Gilchrist’s biography helped put Blake on the
map, drawing attention to his work and making
it relevant even after Blake had died.
• In volume 2 of the Gilchrist biography, he
printed all of Songs of Innocence and
Experience, but did not print it next to the
artwork. Instead, he printed the artwork all
together at the end of the volume. This shows
us people’s initial misunderstanding of Blake.
His art was undervalued and not seen as a
critical aspect of his work.
• How would reading The Little Black Boy in
Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience
without the accompanying artwork change
your perception of this work?
5. • This was Robert Browning’s personal
copy of Songs of Innocence and
Experience, given to him by his
friend W.A. Dow.
• This was a first edition. It was given
to Browning in 1839.
• The inscription says, “W.A. Dow to
his friend Browning. April 3, 1839”
6. • Blake first published parts of Songs of Innocence and Experience in London in 1789.
• Songs of Innocence and Experience was written during the Industrial Revolution
which greatly impacted his writing.
This was a time of economic and social change.
Blake protested against many aspects of the Industrial Revolution such as: social
changes and injustices, religious experiences being personal rather than
institutional, and the transition from rural to urban environments.
• This particular edition was published in 1859, many years later and after Blake’s
death.
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning was heavily influenced by Blake’s work and, as a result,
she had very distinct similarities to Blake’s poems within her work.
• E.B.B. wrote The Cry of the Children four years after reading Blake’s Songs of
Innocence and Experience.
Another poem that had similar concepts was Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point.
7. Cry of the Children, E.B.B.
Stanza 1:
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, —
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west—
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
Stanza 11:
"But, no!" say the children, weeping faster,
" He is speechless as a stone;
And they tell us, of His image is the master
Who commands us to work on.
Go to! " say the children,—"up in Heaven,
Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find!
Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving —
We look up for God, but tears have made us blind."
Do ye hear the children weeping and disproving,
O my brothers, what ye preach?
For God's possible is taught by His world's loving —
And the children doubt of each.
The Chimney Sweeper, William Blake
Stanza 1:
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry “ ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”
So your chimneys I sweep and in soot I sleep
Stanza 2:
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said,
“Hush, Tom! Never mind it, for when your head’s bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.”
Stanza 5:
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he’s be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father & never want
8. Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point, E.B.B.
Stanza 1:
I stand on the mark beside the shore
Of the first white pilgrim's bended knee,
Where exile turned to ancestor,
And God was thanked for liberty.
I have run through the night, my skin is as dark,
I bend my knee down on this mark . . .
I look on the sky and the sea.
Stanza 3:
I am black, I am black;
And yet God made me, they say.
But if He did so, smiling back
He must have cast His work away
Under the feet of His white creatures,
With a look of scorn,--that the dusky features
Might be trodden again to clay.
The Little Black Boy, William Blake
Stanza 1:
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.
Stanza 3:
Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.
Stanza 7:
Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.
9. I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
10. The Sick Rose
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
The Little Vagabond
Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm;
Besides I can tell where I am use'd well,
Such usage in heaven will never do well.
But if at the Church they would give us some Ale.
And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale;
We'd sing and we'd pray, all the live-long day;
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray,
Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing.
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring:
And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church,
Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch.
And God like a father rejoicing to see,
His children as pleasant and happy as he:
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel
But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel.
11. • What kind of interpretation does the
image invite?
• What kind of interpretation does the
poem in sequence suggest?
• The 1839 edition makes many other
rearrangements and does not make note
of any of the changes.
• Blake intentionally rearranges the poems
in subsequent distributions of Songs of
Innocence and Experience as a way to
rebel against this narrative type
interpretation of the work.
• The Inclusion of The Grave seems to
serve as a powerful book end for the
narrative that this arrangement appears
to create
12. • What kind of interpretation does the
image invite?
• What kind of interpretation does the
poem in sequence suggest?
• The 1839 edition makes many other
rearrangements and does not make note
of any of the changes.
• Blake intentionally rearranges the poems
in subsequent distributions of Songs of
Innocence and Experience as a way to
rebel against this narrative type
interpretation of the work.
• The Inclusion of The Grave seems to
serve as a powerful book end for the
narrative that this arrangement appears
to create
