Songs of Experience

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The Songs of Experience is a poetry collection, forming the second part of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Many of the poems appearing in Innocence have a counterpart in 'Experience', with quite a different perspective of the world. The disastrous end of the French Revolution caused Blake to lose faith in the goodness of mankind, explaining much of the volume's sense of despair. Blake also believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, believe that children should be kept from becoming experienced entirely. In truth, he believed that children should indeed become experienced but through their own discoveries, which is reflected in a number of these poems. Blake printed and published 'Songs of Innocence' alone, but 'Songs of Experience' was always printed and published as a companion to 'Innocence', indicating that Blake did not intend the work to stand alone.

"Songs of Experience" contains the following poems:

Introduction
Earth's Answer
The Clod & the Pebble
Holy Thursday
The Little Girl Lost & The Little Girl Found
The Chimney Sweeper
Nurses Song
The Sick Rose
The Fly
The Angel
The Tyger
My Pretty Rose Tree: Ah! Sun-flower: The Lilly
The Garden of Love
The Little Vagabond
London
The Human Abstract
Infant Sorrow
A Poison Tree
A Little Boy Lost
A Little Girl Lost
To Tirzah
The School-Boy
The Voice of the Ancient Bard