Analyse and compare the ways in which Blake presents the contrasting ideas of ‘innocence’ and ‘experience’ in his poetry

William Blake was born on the 28th November 1757 and is con military positionred adept of the freshman quixotic poets. The Romantic era was a driving that began in the eighteenth century. Romantic poets who include Wordsworth, Keats and Coleridge believed in rebelling against ordinations values and the strict rules of metrical composition and art these were the good deal who modificationd English poetry. At the end of the 1700s Blake published a account book titled Songs of Innocence and Experience The devil contrary states of the kind soul which contained songs on convertible subjects notwithstanding explored in the 2 states of white and experience.I sh only comp ar four of Blakes rimes in this essay The bear, The Tyger and The l angstrom chimney Sweep (which appears in near(prenominal) collections). The Lamb asks us to relate the lambs image as the most absolved of idols creation, to that of its muddler, the lamb of God. It begins with a interrogative sente nce made by a youngster, who asks the lamb how it came to be and who made thee. Thee is the crude form of the vocalize you and Blake apply it end-to-end the metrical composition, which prep bes it a religious t mavin as this was a tidings utilise in the sexagenarian Testament. These get-go dickens ancestrys argon a rhyming couplet in tetrameter.When recitation The Lamb magnificent images spring to mind, peculiarly half track through the first stanza by the stream and oer the mead (meadow). This mental imagery is uniform to descriptions made in the Old Testament book of Psalms. (Especially Psalm 23, The nobleman is my shepherd, I shall not want) The plump for stanza step to the fores in much the same way as the first, with two spots of tetrameter. This time, instead of a scruple, a statement is made, leading on to answer the query made in the first meter. Again, Blake uses the archaic form of you inadequate Lamb Ill tell thee, to re-enforce the religious sid e of the song.This stanza goes on to say that the lamb was created by the one who calls himself lamb, in other haggling, saviour. Jesus is seen as the figure of purity in the Bible. Like most of Blakes cultivate, God has been discussed roughly in this poetry. Each stanza in The Lamb contains quintuplet rhyming couplets and the repetition at the start and end of each verse makes the poem audio slightly want a nursery rhyme consequently reflecting the child-like innocent qualities of the poem. It appears around devotional and the rhythm helps to instal it ballad-like qualities. The poem generally has a repetitive structure and rhyme scheme.Blake uses vocabulary similar to that of a pastoral poem. The answer to the skepticism asked in the first stanza reveals the childs innocence and faith. It indicates that he accepts any thing he is told with disclose question. The child associates himself and the lamb with Jesus, and in the Bible Jesus shows kindness towards children. good deal in the first stanza is descriptive and rural, for typeface By the stream and oer the mead. This forces the reviewer to think of the happiness and innocence connected with the countryside. This contrasts with the minute, which is more spiritual and straightforward.Although the question asked by the child in verse one is fleeceable, it is alike precise signifi washstandt. It is a elementary question still one that stooge be position ab turn out a petite deeper. This quality is present in almost all of Blakes work his poems can be read on a number of levels. The Lamb is a reminder of innocence in a time of war, rotary motion and industrial labour that was all victorious prescribe while Blake was writing. The Tyger is the experience tete-a-tete to The Lamb it too begins with a question. The storyteller is inquire who created the tyger What immortal hand or pump/Could frame thy maintenanceful symmetry.From then on each stanza contains more questions, which branch out from this first the narrator suggests the creator of the tyger is like a blacksmith, using quarrel much(prenominal) as anvil and furnace in his descriptions. He seems move that the creator of the lamb could in like manner be able to create much(prenominal) an diametrical character much(prenominal)(prenominal) as the tyger. Blake could be comparing the two sides of man trusty and bad as well as innocence and experience. The poem is made up of six quatrains in rhyming couplets. It is in a regular, rhythmic tetrameter.The beat is in truth prominent and if read in a certain way could start to sound like a chant or a spell, this makes the proofreader feel enthralled and in touch with the poem. Blake builds on the supposition of comparing nature and art, suggesting that although the tiger is pleasing it is also very violent and this could perchance reflect its creator. An underlying question arises whilst reading The Tyger what type of God could create such a s cary beast but also a sweet lamb. By evolving this question further the poem could be seen to be asking why God lets bad things happen, when he can also let such good things occur.It ends with a repetition of the first verse, but uses the word d ar instead of could. Blake is suggesting that because the tiger is such a terrifying beast, it would take great avant-garde from God to create it. The central question in both poems is similar, but hostile The Lamb, The Tyger finishes without an answer. This could suggest that because The Lamb is in the innocence collection that the question more easily answered when musical theme slightly in a naive way. When thought approximately as it is in The Tyger, at a more in-depth level, the question becomes more complicated.When The Tyger and The Lamb are directly contrasted they give a solve comparison of kind nature, this shows that nothing is without its bad side, for example, there cannot be call offd land without hell. In both poems B lake emphasises his primary(prenominal) point in the first and hold lines. The Tyger contains harsh verbs such as grasp and seize and also uses harsh sounding alliteration with the earn B, D and T Burning B even off, however, in The Lamb Blake uses softer letters such as L and M Little Lamb to show the blue(a) nature of the poem and creature universe described.In both poems metaphors are used and reflect Blakes view on worship and God. In The Lamb Blake, through the eyes of a child, compares the creator, God, to the lamb itself For he calls himself a lamb. Here, Blake is describing Jesus, the Lamb of God. Blake often wrote about the same subjects in both collections, he sometimes named the poems identically, such as in The Chimney carpet sweeper in Songs of Innocence. This poem deals with chimney sweepers and the arrange cosmos one takes on a young childs life. It tells of two little boys and their suffering. oneness of the boys, the eldest, narrates.On first glance, th e poem seems mount of joy and gives the illusion of ending happily. feeling deeper, it conveys a message of exploitation and child suffering. The poem in Songs of Experience tells of a boy grieving and how he has to go to work, to almost certainly meet his death, while his contract and father think they are doing the right thing. In the first stanza of the innocence poem, the narrator tells of how his pay off died and how young he was. The collocation of the words died and young cause stress in the first lines because death and youth are not often associated.The boy cries weep, weep, weep which has two meanings. At first it seems to be the boy tears, but to be a chimneysweeper you must advertise by yelling sweep, sweep, sweep. So by including this in the poem Blake has indicated that the boy is so young he can barely pronounce words properly, yet he must go to work. In the following line, a secondly person pronoun is used which directly implies that the reader is directly responsible for the underage risky work being done make the reader feel responsible and guilty. The second stanza tells the beginning of a dream had by a younger boy, Tom.He dreams that thousands of chimney sweepers are locked in coffins. The word locked link directly with the word key in the next stanza and causes tension between the two verses. Blake was give tongue to to remove had many visions of various creatures and people. He claimed to experience them from early on. When he was ix years old he told his mother that he had seen a tree modify with angels, and not long after, in a field of workers gathering hay, a vision of angelic figures walking. He has incorporate his visions into this poem by using the idea of a dream. The triplet stanza contrasts with the second immensely. spot the second is full of misery and contains words such as black, lockd and coffins the third tells of independence and hope. The vocalise their bags leave behind in line three is a metaphor for their troubles left behind on earth. Blake uses metaphors to conjure up imagery in the readers head. The fourth stanza contains the main message of the poem. Tom awakes to an angel coition him that if he whole kit hard on earth he will be rewarded in heaven. This is Blake juiceless(prenominal)ally criticising the hypocritical nightclub of his time. The experience poem is narrated in third person and the first stanza contains the same phrase as the innocence poem.The boy is crying weep, weep which again indicates his young age. The first line of the poem, A little black thing among the snow, is a very world-shattering one and brings to mind clear images of black against white. Again, Blake has used tension in the beginning of the poem to create strong imagery in the readers head at an early stage. In the second verse the child is speaking. He tells of how he was dressed in array of death and sent out to work as a chimneysweeper. Again, there is tension between the mentio n of happiness in the first line and the word death in the third.Ironically, the parents are being good by turn the child, but on the other hand, they are clothing him in clothes of death to be a chimney sweep. The last verse is the boy telling of how he fools his parents. He dances and sings to make them think they are doing no amiss(p), when in fact they are move their give child to his death. The last phrase, heaven out of misery is a very significant one. The concept of heaven only works if there is suffering as well. thither would not be a heaven if there were not a hell. Blake tells how children are being exploited by the promise of eternal happiness for work on earth.Adult manipulation is very clear in this poem and Blake is being ironic by suggesting that suffering is the only pathway to happiness. Both poems contain clear messages. The Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Innocence shows that the children have a confirmatory and naive outlook on life. They make the best of it and do not fear death this is because they do not jazz the truth and are therefore innocent. An reversal message is conveyed in the poem of Songs of Experience in which the child blames his parents for putting him in such a dangerous position.He is less nai??ve and blames God & his Priest & King. This is different from the innocence poem because the little boy has been influenced by society and has an experienced view. The subject area of God runs throughout both poems. In the first, an angel appears and talks about heaven. The word lamb in the second verse relate with the lamb of God, incorporateing Jesus and suffering. In the second poem, heaven is talked about and a church building is mentioned in the beginning. Both poems play on the idea of how to get into heaven and the naiveness of young children.The poems that I have analysed in this essay have all include the theme of God, as did nearly all of Blakes work. Blake hated organised morality, but on the other hand wa s a very spiritual and religious man. The times in which he lived forced church upon people, sooner than leaving them to make up their own minds. Blake also had a hatred for formal education, which we can see in his poem from Songs of Experience titled The School Boy. He matte up school was unnecessary and not having be school himself thought that it oppressed the souls creative spirit.Blake wanted his current societys attitude to change he knew that sending innocent children out to work at such a young age was wrong. In some of his other poetry Blake concentrates on areas of society he would like to be changed, such as in The Little vague Boy. Blake thinks that the attitude white people have learnt to associate with black people is wrong and should be changed. Much of his inspiration came from the french and Industrial revolutions. In fact, he was so interested in the changes taking place in France, he wrote a poem The French Revolution in 1791.Blake was living in an ever-cha nging society, where traditional ideas and values were being questioned and new ones created he wanted to be a part of it but in his own imaginative, visionary way. The Innocence collection could represent the way that the society of Blakes time thought and believed, and the experience collection, representing the way it really was. The people of Blakes time would just ignore problems such as child employment and education, hoping it would go away, but Blake knew something had to be done, and he talked about this in his poetry.Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience give comparative images of children, babies, religion and the general society. It shows how different everything seems when we are innocent. Although the two collections show the two contrary states of the human soul, they seem to join together and string the same themes throughout. Some of these ideas are include both collections of poems, but are talked about in contrasting ways, such as religion, children, educa tion and death.