The Comparison of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

 All of the readings in module three are examples of poetry and romanticism. Each poem has great meaning. I am going to compare William Blake’s works Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. These writings are very similar but yet different at the same time. In the works under Songs of Innocence there is a sadder tone than the poems under Songs of Experience. Under “Songs of Experience it is more of a happier tone. They both tell a story of a child against an adult world. A world of corruption and force. A story of peoples innocence starting when they are born and ending in a scandalous world.

There were several poems under Songs of Innocence and they all petray a world of hope and fears.The poem under Songs of Innocence called The Lamb talks of a more gentle, quite world. The Lamb is what I assume to be a child asking who made them. A story of good and innocence. It tells of how sweet a lamb can be because when you think of a lamb you think of them running through the meadows. Living a carefree life. The Lamb represents the good in life. Several of the poems are wrote under the view of children. All going toward the transformation from a child to an adult. A poem where William Blake is just trying to show an optimistic child.The poems under Songs of Innocence are all trying to explain the positive side of a humans interpretation of the world before an unprincipled event happens. The Chimney Sweeper is also a poem under the Songs of Innocence. It tells of a young boy not sure why he is in the situation. Why would his dad do this? It tells of a young boy being sold to go work as a chimney sweeper. It tells of a little boy who just can not understand why his family did this. So young and alone. A family who could not afford to take care of him. Giving a boy a life with food and work. Except the work was not good. It often killed the kids at young ages. They go from a life of what they think is happy go lucky to a life of a sweeper. Most of them choosing to be sweepers over starvation.

Some of the poems under Songs of Experience are The Tyger and The Chimney Sweeper. The Tyger under this category tells of a darker side. It is the opposite version of The Lamb. It tells of negative acts toward this day and time. The Tyger tells of the bad in life. It talks about all evils in the world. The Chimney Sweeper under this category tells of a boy in a miserable situation. The boy in this version knows what has been put before him. This child knows of the misery that comes with being a chimney sweeper. The child in this version is angry. The boys knows what is coming to him in this poem. He knows that death is coming. He knows what this line of work does to children. He learned of a miserable life at an early age. He understands the life the has been handed to him. William Blake is telling a story that is off. A story were a little boys innocence is taken away from him.

The poems that I have chosen talk about tell the good and evils of this world through the eyes of a child. They talk of a world full of sunny and dark days. Blake leaves that feeling of hope in the poems under Songs of Innocence while in the poems under Songs of Experience give off a life of evil and sadness. Blake was just trying to portray two versions of different perspectives in the world. The poems in both of these categories are seen through the eyes of innocence and then by experience. All in their biblical aspects of how could God create such good and joyful to such bad and painful in this world. In a world which most petray as the same.