Right from the beginning of the two sections of the book with the two introductions it is clearly evident which one is which. The introduction to The Book of Innocence talks about the Bible and Jesus. It says “pipe a song about a lamb.” Jesus was the Lamb of God. The themes in the poem are primarily about taming wild ideas. There is a progression from something wild, to something tamed in the poem.
The image of the lamb comes up in the poem as well. In a lot of his poems Blake uses the lamb as an image of experience. In the bible Jesus was the Lamb of God. The innocence in this poem can be compared to U.A. Fanthorpe’s “Half-Past Two”. In the poem the child is innocent as all children are at that age. He doesn’t know how to tell the time and so he must stay in the room not knowing if he would ever leave. The innocence in this poem is represented by the lamb in Blake’s.
“Earth’s Answer”, another of Blake’s poems from the experience section of the book shows another view of experience. The poem tells of the way earth is apparently imprisoned by fear and jealousy, but in fact it is all in the mind. Of course the earth is free. It is only imprisoned in the mind. If it is to escape its imprisonment, it needs to escape its mind. At the start of the last stanza it says “break this heavy chain.” This is the earth asking someone else to release her from imprisonment. This is impossible because there is only one person that has access to the earth’s mind. It is the earth itself.
This poem is in The Book of Experience because, going back to the introduction, it shows how the earth wants to forget the things it has witnessed. Therefore it has to belong to experience.
Blake has written many “pairs” of poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience, one in ‘Songs of Innocence’ and the other in ‘Songs of Experience’. One of these pairs, both entitled “The Chimney Sweeper”, show how Blake viewed the industrial revolution and how he hated it.
The chimney sweeper in The Book of Innocence talks of a boy who has been sold by his parents to work as a chimney sweeper. The innocence in the poem is represented by the boy’s curly white hair. In the second stanza the boy gets it shaved off. At that point, the boy loses his innocence. He knows his fate and so his innocence is lost.
This shows through, because the last two stanzas tell of the boy talking to an angel. It says “if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for his father and never want joy.” What the angel is really saying is that if you work hard you will die and you can spend the rest of your time in heaven. The boy believes this and the last stanza shows him running off in his innocence to work so he can join his friends and not have to work again.
What this says about the angel is that she feels bad for not being able to help the children on earth. Instead, by offering them a place in heaven by making them work hard so they die quickly it shows that the angel is not as pure as she seems. She wants to help and the only way she can is by being cruel to them and telling them that life will be better soon. It can leave two impressions on the reader. It can show that the angel is greedy and bad. She wants the children to continue working to ensure that the status quo is maintained and so uses their innocence against them. But it can also leave the reader feeling like the angels are good people and only want to help in the best way they can.
“The Chimney Sweeper” in The Book of Experience is very different to the one in The Book of Innocence. This one talks of another “little black Thing” (a child chimney sweeper) weeping in the snow. His parents have abandoned him to go to church. The last stanza shows the boy’s parents ignorance. They think because the boy dances and sings that it is okay to abandon him.
The reason this poem is in The Book of Experience is because the child has been a chimney sweeper for a while. He has accepted his fate and given up. He has become experienced enough to think that all hope is gone but in truth, just like in earth’s answer, all of these ideas are all in the child’s head. All he has to do is realise it.
Although Blake hated the Industrial Revolution he still had hope. This hope comes in the form of a poem he wrote called Jerusalem. Although he believed in and followed the ideals of the French revolution, this poem shows how there is still hope. Although not in Songs of Innocence and Experience, Jerusalem shows how Blake hated the industrial revolution and how the ideals of the French revolution should be the way to live. In the poem, Blake used the Legend that Mary Magdalene came to England. Jerusalem represents Blake’s good side. He uses Jerusalem as a place of sanctuary and a place of good. The last three lines “Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand till we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.” By saying this Blake is condemning the Industrial Revolution and saying that he will always be angry, and will always fight until the horrors of the revolution stop and until England has been cleansed of treachery. Jerusalem represents the Promised Land. Blake has done this to show that although he believes the industrial revolution is bad, there is still hope for the world.
William Blake wrote many poems in his book Songs of Innocence and Experience all of which represent a hatred of the Industrial Revolution or a support of the French revolution ideals. He was a very controversial poet in the 17th and 18th century but now his poems can be considered as masterpieces. They are like little wedges of insight into his life and the Industrial Revolution, and his poems will be remembered as he will be for a long time.
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