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In his own words

Introduction

William Blake · 1757-1827 · From Songs of Innocence (1789)

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 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.

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.