Songs of Innocence and Experience is a collection of poems that are written by an English, painter and  poet named William Blake. The poems had first been published in 1789 with poems, such as: The Lamb, Holy Thursday (Songs of Innocence), The Little Black Boy, The Tyger, Holy Thursday (Songs of Experience), The Sick Rose, and two versions of The Chimney Sweeper. The Songs of Innocence in my opinion discusses the youth and the innocence they lose as they grow older. While The Songs of Experience discuss the loss of innocence and growing older. The Songs of Innocence and Experience discuss William Blake’s different viewpoints and opinions on the youth and those that are growing older, basically like comparing and contrasting. While this collection of poems does an amazing job at comparing and contrasting the youth to growing older, I have noticed connections between the poems called The Lamb and The Tyger. The poem called The Lamb starts out from the viewpoint of a child, and he asks “Little Lamb who made thee” showing how Blake questions who made an animal so innocent. In the poem Blake writes, “ He is meek and he is mild. He became a little child. I a child & now a lamb.” Blake thinks of the lamb as if it’s a symbol to express and represent the youth and their innocence. While this idea is very original, I have noticed that there is a connection between The Lamb and The Tyger.

The poem called The Tyger starts off by saying “ Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” Which is the speaker questioning a fearsome tiger about who would’ve or could’ve created such a fearsome and dangerous animal. Throughout the entirety of this poem the speaker continues to question a tiger’s creation, and this is seen throughout each stanza. Hmmm, very similar to how The Lamb questions who had created such an innocent and youthful creature.

Songs of Innocence are poems from the viewpoint of the youth and innocent, while Songs of Experience are poems from those are continuing to grow and learn. As life goes on you learn about the aspects of life, but you will always question why things are the way they are, or even why the evils of the world needed to be created. If God wasn’t evil, why did he create something so evil and dangerous?

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this collection of poems and I really enjoyed teaching our class about it too! I felt that Taylor, Justine, Jared and I created a really unique, and well planned lesson plan. Now, I am curious to what my classmates thought about our teaching of this collection of poems

#Innocence

#Growing

#SongsofInnocenceandExperience

#WilliamBlake