SONGS OF INNOCENCE
AND
SONGS OF EXPERIENCE.
[Engraved 1789.]
Here again but little need be added to what has already been said in the Life respecting the Songs of Innocence and Experience. The first series is incomparably the more beautiful of the two, being indeed almost flawless in essential respects; while in the second series, the five years intervening between the two had proved sufficient for obscurity and the darker mental phases of Blake's writings to set in and greatly mar its poetic value. This contrast is more especially evident in those pieces whose subjects tally in one and the other series. For instance, there can be no comparison between the first Chimney Sweeper, which touches with such perfect simplicity the true pathetic chord of its subject, and the second, tinged somewhat with the commonplaces, if also with the truths, of social discontent. However, very perfect and noble examples of Blake's metaphysical poetry occur among the Songs of Experience, such as Christian Forbearance, and The Human Abstract. One piece, the second Cradle Song, I have myself introduced from the MS. note-book often referred to, since there can be no doubt that it was written to match with the first, and it has quite sufficient beauty to give it a right to its natural place. A few alterations and additions in other poems have been made from the same source.
