Blake here is dramatizing Genesis 3:22-24 (KJV),Ģ2 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. Between 17, Blake moved five poems from Innocence to Experience. There have been 39 known copies of The Songs of I nnocence (some of them small groupings of poems or single plates), three of which are currently untraced 45 known copies of The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, one of which is currently untraced and one that has been dispersed and four copies of The Songs of Experience.īlake’s Title Page depicts Adam and Eve, still clothed in leaves, being cast out from the Garden of Eden. Blake did write out an ideal order of the Songs in an 1821 manuscript, but only one copy actually follows that order even though Blake produced copies of the Songs for five years after that date. The number and order of the poems vary by copy. In some cases, such as “Holy Thursday” and “The Chimney Sweep,” there are separate Innocence and Experience poems sharing the same title, while other poems, such as “The Lamb” in Innocence and “The Tyger” in Experience, are clearly companion works meant to be read together. The collection’s subtitle, “Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul,” comments on the nature of the collection: Innocence poems tend to represent the perspective of childhood innocence and are often located in pastoral settings, while Experience poems often represent a disillusioned perspective and are located more often in urban settings. They were combined in 1795 as the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, but Blake continued to produce the two collections separately until 1818 and together as the combined Songs until 1826, the year before his death. The Songs is a combination of two separate collections of poems, The Songs of Innocence, published in 1789, and The Songs of Experience, published in 1794.

Among the Songs’ 54 plates (number varies with some copies) is included “The Tyger,” one of the most anthologized poems in the English language. They were displayed in the Blake in the Heartlandexhibit at Tiffin University, which ran March-April 2015.

This page displays Emily Brandehoff’s response to, and Michael Phillips’s reproduction of, the Title Page to William Blake’s best known collection of poems, Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Songs of experience blake