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In his own words

William Blake

1757-1827 · London. Engraver, painter, and poet, ignored in his own lifetime and unlike anyone before or since. He wrote his poems, etched them into copper with his own illustrations, printed them, and colored them by hand, book by book. Here are twelve from his two contrary collections, the trusting songs of 1789 and the open-eyed ones of 1794, each with a line of introduction to hand you the door.

From Songs of Innocence (1789)

Blake engraved, printed, and hand-colored these poems himself in 1789. They speak in and about the voices of children: pastoral, trusting, sung. The innocence is real. So is the world waiting around its edges.

Introduction

The book opens with a piper meeting a child on a cloud. The child asks for a song, then asks for it to be written down. All of Innocence presents itself as songs a child asked for.

Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee,On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me:
"Pipe a song about a Lamb!" So I piped with merry cheer."Piper, pipe that song again;" So I piped: he wept to hear.
"Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy songs of happy cheer!"So I sang the same again, While he wept with joy to hear.
"Piper, sit thee down and write In a book, that all may read."So he vanish'd 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.
The Lamb

A child asks a lamb who made it, then answers the question. The counter-question lives in Experience, in The Tyger below.

Little Lamb, who made thee Dost thou know who made thee,Gave thee life, and bid thee feedBy the stream and o'er the mead;Gave thee clothing of delight,Softest clothing, woolly, bright;Gave thee such a tender voice,Making all the vales rejoice? 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 LambHe is meek, and 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! Little Lamb, God bless thee!
The Chimney Sweeper

Boys of five and six were sold to climb London's chimneys. Blake gives one of them a dream of release that has to survive the next cold morning.

When my mother died I was very young,And my father sold me while yet my tongueCould scarcely cry "Weep! weep! weep! weep!"So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare,You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."
And so he was quiet, and that very night,As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!--That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
And by came an angel, who had a bright key,And he opened the coffins, and let them all free;Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run,And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind;And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.
And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,And got with our bags and our brushes to work.Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
The Divine Image

A hymn to Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, and to where they actually live. Blake finds the divine nowhere but in the human form.

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, All pray in their distress,And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is God our Father dear;And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love, Is man, his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart Pity, a human face;And Love, the human form divine; And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress,Prays to the human form divine: Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk, or Jew.Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell, There God is dwelling too.
Infant Joy

A two-day-old child names itself Joy. Twelve lines, and one of the gentlest poems in the language.

"I have no name;I am but two days old."What shall I call thee?"I happy am,Joy is my name."Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!Sweet joy, but two days old.Sweet Joy I call thee:Thou dost smile,I sing the while;Sweet joy befall thee!

From Songs of Experience (1794)

Five years later Blake bound Innocence together with its contrary: the same world seen with open eyes. The combined book carries his own subtitle, shewing the two contrary states of the human soul. Several poems answer an Innocence poem by name.

The Tyger

The most famous question in English poetry: what kind of maker makes both the lamb and this? Blake asks it fourteen ways and never answers.

Tyger, tyger, burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what artCould twist the sinews of thy heart?And, when thy heart began to beat,What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?In what furnace was thy brain?What the anvil? what dread graspDare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,And watered heaven with their tears,Did he smile his work to see?Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Tyger, tyger, burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeDare frame thy fearful symmetry?
London

A walk through the city, reading marks of weakness and woe in every face. The church, the palace, and the marriage hearse each take a wound.

I wandered through each chartered street, Near where the chartered Thames does flow,A mark in every face I meet, Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry Every blackening church appalls,And the hapless soldier's sigh Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear How the youthful harlot's curseBlasts the new-born infant's tear, And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
The Sick Rose

Eight lines, one image, no explanation. Whatever the invisible worm is in your life, the poem already knows about it.

O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm,That flies in the night, In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy,And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.
A Poison Tree

What happens to anger you do not speak. It gets watered, it grows, it bears bright fruit, and somebody eats it.

I was angry with my friend:I told my wrath, my wrath did end.I was angry with my foe:I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fearsNight and morning with my tears,And I sunned it with smilesAnd with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,Till it bore an apple bright,And my foe beheld it shine,and he knew that it was mine,--
And into my garden stoleWhen the night had veiled the pole;In the morning, glad, I seeMy foe outstretched beneath the tree.
The Clod and the Pebble

Two definitions of love, from a trodden clod of clay and a hard little pebble. Blake lets both stand and takes no side.

"Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care,But for another gives it ease, And builds a heaven in hell's despair."
So sang a little clod of clay, Trodden with the cattle's feet,But a pebble of the brook Warbled out these metres meet:
"Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to its delight,Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven's despite."
The Garden of Love

The speaker returns to the green where he used to play and finds a chapel built on it, with a prohibition written over the door. This edition opens the poem with two stanzas Blake left in his notebook.

I laid me down upon a bank, Where Love lay sleeping;I heard among the rushes dank Weeping, weeping.
Then I went to the heath and the wild, To the thistles and thorns of the waste;And they told me how they were beguiled, Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.
I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen;A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;So I turned to the Garden of Love That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves, And tombstones where flowers should be;And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.
The Chimney Sweeper

The Innocence poem of the same name, seen without the dream. The parents are at church, praising a God the child says is made of their misery.

A little black thing in the snow,Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--"They are both gone up to the church to pray.
"Because I was happy upon the heath,And smiled among the winter's snow,They clothed me in the clothes of death,And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
"And because I am happy and dance and sing,They think they have done me no injury,And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,Who make up a heaven of our misery."

The poems are in the public domain. The texts here follow Poems of William Blake, Project Gutenberg ebook 574, reproduced verbatim, punctuation included. That late 19th century text keeps the famous Tyger spelling while smoothing some others, so a few lines read slightly differently than in Blake's original etched plates. Songs of Innocence first appeared in 1789, Songs of Experience in 1794, combined by Blake into one book whose title page promises to show the two contrary states of the human soul. The introductions and groupings are ours.