Songs of Experience

Songs of Experience is the second part of Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (first published in 1794), an expansion of Blake's first illuminated book Songs of Innocence. The poems and artwork were reproduced by copperplate engraving and colored with washes by hand. Blake republished Songs of Innocence and Experience several times, often changing the number and order of the plates. The spellings, punctuation and capitalizations are those of the original Blake manuscripts. William Blake (1757 – 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. CONTENT: Introduction Earth's Answer The Clod and the Pebble Holy Thursday The Little Girl Lost The Little Girl Found The Chimney-Sweeper Nurse's Song The Sick Rose The Fly The Angel The Tiger My Pretty Rose Tree Ah, Sunflower The Lily The Garden of Love The Little Vagabond London The Human Abstract Infant Sorrow A Poison Tree A Little Boy Lost A Little Girl Lost A Divine Image A Cradle Song The Schoolboy To Tirzah