Songs of Innocence and of Experience
By William Blake
Blake's two sets of short lyrics look at the same world twice, first through a child's trusting eye with the lamb and the piper, then through experience, with the tyger, the sick rose and the chimney-sweeper's cry. Read side by side, the paired poems argue about innocence, cruelty and the God who made both.
Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.
Table of contents
- 1: Songs of Innocence
- 2: Songs of Experience
- 3: Introduction
- 4: The Shepherd
- 5: The Echoing Green
- 6: The Lamb
- 7: The Little Black Boy
- 8: The Blossom
- 9: The Chimney-Sweeper
- 10: The Little Boy Lost
- 11: The Little Boy Found
- 12: Laughing Song
- 13: A Cradle Song
- 14: The Divine Image
- 15: Holy Thursday
- 16: Night
- 17: Spring
- 18: Nurse’s Song
- 19: Infant Joy
- 20: A Dream
- 21: On Another’s Sorrow
- 22: Introduction
- 23: Earth’s Answer
- 24: The Clod and the Pebble
- 25: Holy Thursday
- 26: The Little Girl Lost
- 27: The Little Girl Found
- 28: The Chimney-Sweeper
- 29: Nurse’s Song
- 30: The Sick Rose
- 31: The Fly
- 32: The Angel
- 33: The Tiger
- 34: My Pretty Rose Tree
- 35: Ah, Sunflower
- 36: The Lily
- 37: The Garden of Love
- 38: The Little Vagabond
- 39: London
- 40: The Human Abstract
- 41: Infant Sorrow
- 42: A Poison Tree
- 43: A Little Boy Lost
- 44: A Little Girl Lost
- 45: A Divine Image
- 46: A Cradle Song
- 47: To Tirzah
- 48: The Schoolboy
- 49: The Voice of the Ancient Bard