Through the appreciation of natural landscape, one is able to further engrain oneself in the joy received from it. Now, although Blake believes innocence is a state only had in childhood, he points throughout Songs of Innocence ways one can access aspects of innocence or in other words, the poetic genius. The innocent is appreciative of nature and engrained in the freedoms and joy of natural landscape while experience, in S ongs of Innocence, is more associated with labor (The Shepherd), questioning (The Lamb), or sadness (The Little Black Boy, whose logical faculties are developed because he is an outcast of society). Innocence is synonymous with joy, the divine nature of the lamb (Jesus Christ), the divine heat in “The Little Black Boy,” and also natural landscape. “The Shepherd” contrasts “The Echhoing Green” because in “The Echhoing Green,” the children are dancing freely and joyous while the adults are left under the tree of experience because of their dedication to reason and responsibility. The darker colors expressed in “The Shepherd” indicate the darkness of experience, or the way it influences the soul through taking away innocence, joy, and a divine presence. In this way, Songs of Innocence is also protesting the industrial revolution because of its effect on the human mind. It is his responsibility, or lack of freed action, that makes him begin to question life and his role as a living person and reason, being developed through labor, is his continuing restriction to freedom. In the picture of “The Shepherd Below” (below) the boy is “watchful while they are in peace.” The boy’s head is looking downward in a state of contemplation. Innocence is not a faculty adults express.įor Blake, a child is introduced to experience through defining realizations and labor.

As mentioned during class, Blake believed adults were always confounded to a state of experience. These lines taken from “Spring” represent freedom because they illustrate a state absent of reason. Because of this, the Songs of Innocence poems are childlike filled with nursery rhymes, observation, and little meaning. For Blake, childhood is a state of innocence, a state of freedom that is lost as we age into adulthood and the faculties of reason. Songs of Innocence express Blake’s belief in the contrary nature of the human soul joyous freedom and restriction.

Songs of innocence