Innocence & Experience.

Throughout Blake's poetry, it becomes quite evident what his overall vision of "innocence" and "experience" truly is. Innocence to Blake is clearly childhood or the state of childhood. Childhood to Blake isn't really a state of being naive necessarily, but a state of being free and almost elated because the mind of a child is almost, indeed, pure and blind to the oppressions and struggles throughout life that they have not yet "experienced." I believe, personally, that in a way, he is also discretely speaking of his inner child or inner "innocence." If you read into "The Songs of Innocence," you can see that he is obviously speaking of a child, but he says "On a cloud I saw a child.." Then in the last two stanzas he seems to be speaking of being told by this child to " ' sit thee down and write In a book that all may read' So he vanished 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. " Could he have been day-dreaming of himself as a child or channeling his inner child as an inspriation to create these books of songs he was writing? It's almost as if he misses his childhood days when he makes references in his songs to children. For example in " The Ecchoing Green, " lines 15-20, he speaks of the joys that were seen "When we were all, girls & boys."
He also makes a couple biblical references to innocence in that when he speaks of a child, he refers to them as a "lamb." In "The Lamb" he goes to say " Little Lamb who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb I'll tell thee, Little Lamb I'll tell thee! He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb; He is meek & he is mild, He became a little child; I a child and thou a lamb, We are called by his name. Little Lamb God bless thee." Also, in "Holy Thursday," which is a religiously bound holiday in London, he says " The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys and girls raising their inncocent hands." He also makes reference to the book of Genesis when making the transition from the poems focused more on "innocence" to, specifically, "The Songs of Experience."
"Experience," to Blake, proves to be the realizations of the adult life: anger, hatred, poverty, and all sorts of misfortune that people have to face with solely life "experience." You first get a taste of Blake's "experience " in "The Chinmey Sweeper." It tells the story of a young boy whose mother is deceased and his father sold him to work as a Chimney sweep, and in that miserable life, he experiences God, and in the end he finds comfort in knowing that God is there for him and waiting on him when the time is right. He also begins to sound a little bitter when dealing with love in " The Clod & the Pebble." "Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to it's delight; Joys in another's loss of ease, and builds a Hell in Heaven's despite." He also speaks much of poverty and missfortune in the "contrary" "Holy Thursday." " Is that a trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many chilren poor? It is a land of poverty!"
I believe Blake's interpretations of "innocence" and "experience" are extremely personal. This is what he's feeling/has felt growing into an adult, and these songs of innocence and these songs of experience are inspired by his past childhood and the, then, modern-day London.