Songs of Innocence and of Experience 217grateful for Jesus’ sacrifice for the redemption of
humanity, including her baby and herself. The same
scene is differently presented in Experience, where
adults perceive childhood jealously. For example, the
children’s nurse in the “Nurse’s Song” is embittered
while she watches her charges play freely in the val-
ley. Rather than raising holy thoughts or emotions
of gratitude and benevolence, the children only
remind her of her declining youth. She therefore
secretly mocks their joy and soothes her bitterness
with thoughts of their own future decline.
Innocence and experience also interact in such
poems as the explicitly contrasted “The Lamb” of
Innocence and “The Tyger” of Experience. The speak-
er’s innocent outlook causes him to view the lamb
in the spiritual manner with which he was taught to
perceive life. The speaker thus glorifies the Creator
by commenting on the lamb’s simple and immedi-
ate physical needs, which the child shares, such as
enjoying life, food, clothing, and a beautiful voice.
The child excitedly concludes this list of blessings
with the additional delight of sharing their names
with Jesus, the lamb, and the child.
The speaker in the second lyric perceives the
tiger with a rather mature outlook, commenting
on its complex nature in a series of rhetorical ques-
tions. Although the speaker dwells at length on
each physical feature, the tiger appears to defy his
conceptions and rather puzzles him with its perva-
sive strength. The speaker wonders about the tiger’s
creator by listing the incredible powers required in
creating such a creature, but he refrains from identi-
fying this creator, unlike the speaker in “The Lamb,”
who joyfully identifies the lamb’s creator and his as
one. The creator of “The Tyger” is also paradoxically
challenged by being materialized and humanized
with his iron-working tools, though he is repeatedly
glorified for his great abilities to create such a being,
the tiger, and its weaker counterpart, the lamb. By
juxtaposing the tiger and the lamb, the speaker
explores creation from perspectives of innocence
and of experience, the simple child’s eye and the
complicated adult’s.
From the previous examples, the realization the
speaker achieves in Experience produces the skeptical
tone of the second section. These lyrics criticize the
state of humanity only after the children of Innocence
have led a happy and innocent life, abiding by the
religious and social concepts that they have been
taught to internalize. In the second section, Blake
suggestively reveals the situation of those who have
failed to internalize such concepts and the threat
they pose to institutionalized religion with their
questionings. The abused groups of the latter sec-
tion thus reject the otherworldly beliefs by which
the children of innocence were oppressed, instead
demanding immediate relief.
Mariam Radhwinature in Songs of Innocence and of Experience
While reading William Blake’s Songs of Innocence
and of Experience, it is important to conceive of the
poet’s nature in generic terms, as including all of
creation. Throughout his Songs, Blake examines dif-
ferent aspects of “nature,” considering each accord-
ing to prevalent beliefs. Besides the natural world,
nature in Blake’s Songs includes human nature.
Innocence focuses on innocent human nature and
promotes a positive outlook of life, to the extent
of accepting injustice and misery and emphasiz-
ing human love. Experience stresses humans’ darker
side, such as jealousy, hatred, and their potential for
destruction.
Various natural elements appear in each section
of Songs, including wild and tame animals, various
plants and flowers, and a wide selection of birds and
beasts. Nature in its disparate forms functions as a
protective shield, especially for the children of Inno-
cence, offering comfort and protecting them from
unknown dangers. Nature also repeatedly changes
color and consistency in both sections, taking vari-
ous forms and roles.
On the visual level, Blake published his Songs
in illuminated printings that were hand-colored
using a complicated process. Most of his lyrics
were printed with colorful illustrations that further
enriched the meaning he conveyed with his words.
To examine the choice of colors would be a futile
task because they inevitably changed with time
while appearing in different manuscripts. However,
one important aspect of Blake’s drawing efforts is
that using such a costly method to print his poems
visually and textually emphasizes the beauty and
importance of nature.