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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.

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Table of contents

  1. 1: Songs of Innocence
  2. 2: Songs of Experience
  3. 3: Introduction
  4. 4: The Shepherd
  5. 5: The Echoing Green
  6. 6: The Lamb
  7. 7: The Little Black Boy
  8. 8: The Blossom
  9. 9: The Chimney-Sweeper
  10. 10: The Little Boy Lost
  11. 11: The Little Boy Found
  12. 12: Laughing Song
  13. 13: A Cradle Song
  14. 14: The Divine Image
  15. 15: Holy Thursday
  16. 16: Night
  17. 17: Spring
  18. 18: Nurse’s Song
  19. 19: Infant Joy
  20. 20: A Dream
  21. 21: On Another’s Sorrow
  22. 22: Introduction
  23. 23: Earth’s Answer
  24. 24: The Clod and the Pebble
  25. 25: Holy Thursday
  26. 26: The Little Girl Lost
  27. 27: The Little Girl Found
  28. 28: The Chimney-Sweeper
  29. 29: Nurse’s Song
  30. 30: The Sick Rose
  31. 31: The Fly
  32. 32: The Angel
  33. 33: The Tiger
  34. 34: My Pretty Rose Tree
  35. 35: Ah, Sunflower
  36. 36: The Lily
  37. 37: The Garden of Love
  38. 38: The Little Vagabond
  39. 39: London
  40. 40: The Human Abstract
  41. 41: Infant Sorrow
  42. 42: A Poison Tree
  43. 43: A Little Boy Lost
  44. 44: A Little Girl Lost
  45. 45: A Divine Image
  46. 46: A Cradle Song
  47. 47: To Tirzah
  48. 48: The Schoolboy
  49. 49: The Voice of the Ancient Bard