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William Blacke

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William Blake, the greatest visionary poet, is regarded as forerunner of Romantic Movement in English literature. He is a devout admirer of intrinsic energies and sublime instincts of human soul Actually Blake’s philosophy asserts more than anything else the contrariety of systems with regard to human soul and the other objects of creation. This characteristic has been reflected in his “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”. The contrariety of human soul is the striking point of the songs.
The study of the poems in the two groups shows the two contrary states of human soul. In the ‘Song of Innocence’ Blake depicts the happiness and innocence of a child, to the child the world is a world of simplicity, innocence, purity, happiness and security. In this stage of life love radiates the human soul and it mitigates human sufferings. But the ‘Songs of experience’ are totally apart from the childlike vision of the ‘Songs of Innocence’. The world in the ‘Songs of experience’ is a world of cruelty, tyranny, repression, evil, guilt and suffering. Here instead of joy and innocence, there is misery and oppression.

In the ‘Song of Innocence’ life, is delighting and free. Although fear is not necessarily totally absent from this world, but when danger threatens parent figure is at hand to console and to comfort but the protective guardian that we find in the ‘Songs of Experience’.
Now we can look at the songs how the poet treats, with his excellent use of symbols, the stages and how the first turns to the second.

At the very introductory poem of the innocence, we are informed the nature of innocence. The setting of the poem is natural, pastoral and joyful, and it is about the children under the guidance of God, as ‘a child’ and ‘lamb’ represent Christ himself in the following lines- “On a cloud I saw a child And he laughing said to me ‘Pipe a song about a lamb!’ ”
And at last “Every child may joy to hear”
That means the followers of innocence may enjoy hearing the songs. On the other hand, the ‘Introduction’ of the song of experience expresses the nature of experience. It begins with these lines- Here the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past and Future sees; Whose ears have heard? The Holy word, That walked among the ancient trees,

That is, the speaker himself is experienced here and not bound to anyone. Moreover, in this poem there is ‘the lapsed soul’, representing the human being that was expelled from the Garden of Eden through bitter experience. However, at last of the poem, there is a hint of regeneration and salvation of this mankind.

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