Comparison of Blake's "Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience" both poems included

Essay by Dre FriedelCollege, UndergraduateA, May 1996

download word file, 10 pages 4.2

Downloaded 266 times

Introduction (Innocence)

Piping down the valleys wild,

Piping songs of pleasant glee,

On a cloud I saw a child,

And he laughing said to me:

'Pipe a song about a lamb!'

So I piped with merry chear.

'Piper, pipe that song again;'

So I piped, he wept to hear.

'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;

Sing thy songs of happy chear:'

So I sung the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.

'Piper, sit thee down and write

In a book, that all may read.'

So he vanish'd from my sight,

And I pluck'd a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stain'd the water clear,

And I wrote my happy songs

Every child may joy to hear.

Introduction (Experience)

Hear the voice of the Bard!

Who Present, Past, & Future, sees;

Whose ears have heard

The Holy Word

That walk'd among the ancient trees,

Calling the lapsed Soul,

And weeping in the evening dew;

That might controll

The starry pole,

And fallen, fallen light renew!

'O Earth, O Earth, return!

'Arise from out the dewy grass;

'Night is worn,

'And the morn

'Rises from the slumberous mass.

'Turn away no more;

'Why wilt thou turn away?

'The starry floor,

'The wat'ry shore,

'Is giv'n thee till the break of day.'

The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)

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 & in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,

That curl'd like a lamb's back, was shav'd: so I said

'Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare

You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.'

And so he was quiet &...