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In his own words

Infant Joy

"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!

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

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.