William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience Hannah Johnson, Annie McCausland, Cody Shreffler

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.

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.”

Gilchrist quotes Robert Browning’s Pictor Ignotus 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?

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”

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.

The Chimney Sweeper, William Blake Stanza 1: 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

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.

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

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold, 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. 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.

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

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