Songs of Innocence & Songs of Experience

​With an introduction by Richard Rowley, tutor and lecturer in English Literature at the University of Oxford. ​Thought is life And strength and breath, And the want Of thought is death ​This collection contains some of the most famous lyrics by William Blake (1757–1827), including ‘London’ and ‘The Tiger’. They are revolutionary poems of social complaint from a revolutionary era and they presage many of the themes of Romantic and transcendentalist poetry. ​Reading the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience is a deceptively simple pleasure. Like nursery rhymes, they sing with the joys and fears of childhood. It is a delight to spend our time with the young speakers amid the natural beauty of green woods, dimpling streams and laughing meadows. But as the narrator of each poem echoes and contradicts the last, and as the theme turns from the vitality of youthful innocence to the dead hand of adult experience, we realise that Blake has assembled a powerful collection of songs that possess a complex philosophy. ​Blake celebrates joy, but he celebrates also the war between our creative and destructive impulses. He criticises all attempts by society to resolve this friction, so that even today we are surprised and energised by reading his poems, which are at heart a radical celebration of freedom and equality.