"Innocence" and "Experience" According to Blake

After reading Blake’s poetry it is safe to assume that he would quickly identify “innocence” with young children. This is evident in “Introduction” where it discusses a child who receives great joy just by listening to a song. In fact, Blake focuses on youth in the majority of his poems. For example, “The Lamb” is about a child who questions a lamb about its origins and I believe the lamb is symbolic of innocence. Moreover, “The Nurse’s Song” involves children playing outside while their nurse watches over them. Also, having safety and no sense of danger could go “hand and hand” with Blake’s idea of “innocence” since the children in “The Nurse’s Song” were watched over and protected by the nurse. Ultimately, Blake is stating, in his poems, that childhood is a state of “innocence,” “care freeness” and “inexperience.”

“Songs of Experience” poems quite often contradicted Blake’s “Songs of Innocence.” Therefore, I would define “experience” as the loss of childhood. Not to mention, some of these excerpts imply that humans are more “experienced” once they grow not only physically but emotionally by enduring “trials” and “tribulations.” For example, “The Chimney Sweeper” has a gloomy and dark tone (referring to hardship) with lines such as “They clothed me in the clothes of death,” and “Who make up a heaven of our misery.” I would also say that Blake would coin “experience” as perhaps involving fear and being confined by rules/regulations. For example, I interpreted the poem “Infant Sorrow” to be symbolic of anyone who has ever tried to resist oppression or power whether it is from a tyrant, government, or even a church. The father in the poem is representing the one in “power” since the poem states “Striving in my father’s hands,” but this is just my interpretation.

Lastly, I would define Blake’s idea of “experience” as embedding religion. Religion is deeply rooted in almost all of his poems. I think he would see someone as “experienced” if he or she has been exposed to the word of God. In “Introduction” from “Songs of Experience” it reads “Whose ears have heard the Holy Word that walk’d among the ancient trees,” which leads me to believe Blake’s definition of “experience” not only involves the loss of childhood and hardships but also the familiarity of God and his word.