Table of ContentsIntroductionIntroduction to Songs of Innocence: AnalysisSongs of Experience: Summary of the IntroductionConclusionWorks CitedIntroductionThe collection of William Blake's illuminated poems in Songs of Innocence and of Experience describes, as the title page explains “the two contrary states of the human soul” (Blake 1). Although Songs of Innocence, written in 1789, was written five years before Songs of Experience, the two collections read as stand-alone works of print art and poetry; however, the second work was created to accompany the first. The companion poems Songs of Innocence and of Experience establish distance between the dissimilar states of pure innocence and world-worn experience. Blake's illuminated poems, "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, feature a speaker whose inspirations, themes, and tones highlight the dichotomy between states of innocence and experience of the soul. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayIntroduction to Songs of Innocence: AnalysisBlake's use of the trochaic tetrameter in his "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence produces a rhythm of singing similar to that of children. songs that give the poem a tone of childish innocence. The Piper, Blake's speaker, begins the poem "Piping down the Valleys Wild," a pastoral scene revealing the speaker as unified with the natural world. The "wild valleys" and "songs of pleasant joy" are lawless and unrestrained by social systems and structures, placing the piper in the state of innocence described by S. Foster Damon as "free, for he does not need laws. He is happy. , since it is simple. He enjoys the most spontaneous communion with nature, easily perceiving the divine in all things." It is from this point of view of pastoral innocence that Piper draws inspiration. A child laughing on a cloud, a supernatural symbol of innocent joy, asks the speaker to "sing a song about a lamb." The lamb represents innocence, but also "the Lamb of God", Jesus Christ. Blake's speaker plays "with". joyful singing" and plays the song again for the child who reacts to the speaker's efforts with tears of joy. The tears elicited by the ethereal child during the Piper's second recitation represent a reaction of untouched innocence to the song of Christ's mercy The notion of original sin and the loss of innocence is implicit in Piper's song about the Lamb. The child's tears of joy, in a certain sense, oppose each other. to the tears of "Introduction" in Songs of Experience, but also announce the mourning of lost innocence and acquired experience. Serving as a muse, the child on the cloud urges the speaker to “write in a book that all can read,” the joyful song in the name and perspective of untouched innocence. The "hollow reed" and "rural feather", referenced by the Piper, serve as pastoral symbols for Blake's engraving tool, the chisel used in making the plates from which the Songs of Innocence and Experience were printed for the first time. Watercolors were used by Blake to paint his prints, thus the Piper "stained the clear water", while transcribing his "joyful songs / Every child may have the joy of hearing". The innocence presented by Blake in his vision of the child in untouched nature translates through the artist's tools and onto the page, creating a group of poems written from the perspective of an innocent soul. Songs of Experience: Introductory Summary “Introduction” in Songs of Experience sets a much different tone. While ""Introduction" to Songs of Innocence shows the piper finding inspiration for his poems from an angelic child's gentle requests for a song, "Introduction" to Songs of Experience begins with the speaker demanding: “Listen to the voice of the bard!” ​​/ Who The present, the past and the future see". Unlike the state of innocence in which present joys remain a singular concern, the bard sees past events, present reactions and possible futures. The voice of the Bard differs from the Piper's descriptive tones and takes on an imperative quality signifying the desire to find meaning and create change in the chaos of experience. Instead of composing a song about a lamb, the Bard actually "heard/." The Holy Word / Who walked among the ancient trees,” a direct reference to God searching for Adam and Eve after they committed original sin. Northrop Frye indicates that "the 'Bard' is thus found in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, who draw their inspiration from Christ as the Word of God." Inspired by the word of God and “weeping in the evening dew,” the bard's lamentations over the fall of humanity contrast with the child's innocent cries of joy at the singing of Christ's song. “Calling the fallen soul,” the bard hopes to inspire all human souls. to overcome their fallen state and exercise the power of imagination allowing man to "control / The starry pole, / And the fallen and fallen light is renewed." Where Blake celebrates his vision of innocence in "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence, the bard of experience mourns humanity's first movement away from innocence into the abyss of fragmentation that separates humanity of God and man of man. Inspired by the voice of God, the bard calls to the earth: Arise from the dewy grass; The night is worn out, And the morning Rises from the sleeping mass. The “sleeping mass” spoken of by the Bard constitutes both earth and humanity enveloped in the endless chaos of fragmentation and separation from God. The "Night" has lasted since the Old Testament God cursed humanity and separated the earth from God and will persist until the Bard's orders for the souls of humanity to be released from their material prisons with the dawn of a new post-apocalyptic millennial era, the “morning”. Frye concludes that “the fallen light . .] is the alternating light and darkness of the world we know; the unfallen light would be the eternal light of the City of God”; thus, “the prophet sees at each dawn the image of a resurrection which will raise the world into a completely different state of being”. The bard implores both earth and man to rise from their fallen, fragmented forms and reach, through the awakening of the imagination, a higher state of experienced innocence. The “fallen soul”, which remains locked in the state of experience, binds itself within the terrestrial universe. material domain circumscribed by “the starry ground” and the “aquatic shore”. These boundaries inhibit man's ability to transcend the material realm of experience and reunite the fragmented segments of human experience with the "dawn of day", ending the cycle of light and dark and ushering in the new millennial era in which God and all men find themselves once again. brought together by love and understanding. Songs of Innocence and Experience presents poems in the form of illuminated plates, adding artistic depth to the texts themselves through the contributions made by the settings to the theme of the poems. "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence features text decorated on either side with images "derived from a medieval manuscript illustrating the Tree of Jesse" (Keynes 132-3), showing Christ's genealogical descent from David, the son of Jesse. Blake's song in the initial version of ">.