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Introduction: Wordsworth wrote about the process of growing up thus: Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.
Blake calls the 'prison-house' Expericnce. Instead of innocence, joy, security, he finds guilt, tyranny, misery, hypocrisy and jealousy in the world of experience: here the mood is one of disillusionment. The benign guardians are no more and in their place are the tyrants. Chief among these is the horrible god, Urizen - Blake's symbol of the arch-tyrant-and his agents are those in authority on earth, namely, the king, the priest, the nurse. Although he is only mentioned specifically (though by different names) in three poems 'Earth's Answer,' 'Human Abstract', A Divine Image' - his sable shadow hovers over most of the other 'Songs'. He is 'Starry Jealousy', or Cruelty'. He hates life and joy, and has bound the world in his iron law of prohibition : "Thou shalt not....". Thus the imagery communicates his hostility to life. In Songs of Innocence, children are compared to flowers and angels pour blessings, On each bud and blossom." In Songs of Experience Earth's vital energies are frozen (Earth's Answer), the school boy refers to buds being nipped and the "blossoms blown away"; the Rose has been attacked by the invisible worm and other forces of destruction are the caterpillar and the fly. And there are unnatural growths; tombstones sprouting where flowers used to be the Poison Tree and the Tree of Mystery flourishing in the human brain. The predominating images are those of flattering and binding. Earth is 'prisoned' by Jealousy:; she is fettered in night and frozen; "free. love" is "with bondage bound", the priests "bind with briars", the school boy is imprisoned like a bird in a cage: a little boy lost is bound "with an iron chain" and the infant with Swaddling bands. In Songs of Experience we hear of the mind-forged manacles everywhere.
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| William Blake |
Some Major Poems: 'Introduction' and 'Earth's Answer': The poem 'Introduction' and the consecutive one, 'Earth's Answer' are inseparable. In 'Introduction' the Bard calls upon the fallen earth to rise. The Bard is a prophet vested with the divine power of seeing and knowing the past, present and future. He is one who has heard the 'Holy Word' of God who walked among the ancient trees of the Garden of Eden calling the lapsed soul of man. The Bard's eternity or im mortality is affirmed in these lines. Later, the Bard prompts the earth to rise from her dewy inertia and slumberous dullness. The Bard tells earth that the starry floor and the watery shore may last only until morning.
In Earth's Answer earth symbolises man: The Bard is the medium of God's communication with man. But ultimately the Bard is God Himself and that is why the confusion where the call of Stanzas 2-4 is that of the Bard, or that of the 'Holy Word' arises. Unlike the tender God of Innocence, the God of Experience is the repressive father-figure of institutional religion. The Bard is actually calling upon the fallen soul of man who is indifferent to listen to the call and follow the path of love propounded by Jesus Christ.
In Earth's Answer we get the real state of affairs. Earth appears as an aged hag devoid of her former grace of a virgin. Her virginity is fruitless under the oppression of the 'Selfish Father of Men' and she is imprisoned in a stinking den guarded over by 'Starry Jealousy'. Although she has an irresponsible desire to let loose her emotions and pent up sexual urges she is pitilessly oppressed by the iron rods of the selfish God Jehovah. She asks the Bard to break the chains binding her and release her from her misery.
Earth's Answer' is a typical poem of Songs of Experience. It strikes the note of what experience really is. In this poem we find almost all the element of experience which in the later poems are seen infesting the human mind and behaviour. There is cruelty, jealousy, selfishness, oppression, darkness and dreariness, despair, freezing cold (eternal winter), chains of bondage and all such eternal banes that thwart 'free love'. In the other poems of Experience we find suppression of human instincts. Thus 'Earth's Answer is a miniature of all the poems of Experience.
'The Tyger': Another eloquent poem is 'The Tyger'. This poem is rendered in the form of excited questions asked in striking wonder. The tiger stands for the harsher aspect of human nature. But this aspect with its fearfulness and terror is not to be stamped as sinful or unworthy. It has its own part to play in the whole design of human life, spontaneous human instincts are divine, however brutal they are. In this poem the poet wonders at the symmetry of the tiger and the lustre of its eyes. The majestic frame of the tiger makes the poet think about the equally majestic artist who must have created it. The poet fancies the divine sculptor's mighty shoulder and the strong hands with their rhythmic sinews at work. The poet is taken by surprise at the anticipation of the prodigiousness of the anvil, hammer, the forge and its chain which have helped the Creator create such an amazing and abnormal sort of animal. The gross contrariety between the creation of the lamb and the tiger makes the poet ask:
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
'The Tyger' is one of the most celebrated poems of William Blake. Apart from its lyrical beauty, the poem conveys the essence of the doctrine. "The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man." 'The Tyger' is a contrary poem to 'The Lamb' of Songs of Innocence. Blake's tiger is God's wrath, as the lamb is His love: it is a ruthless, natural predator and it is man's own burning passion shut up within his natural body. The questioner throughout the poem cannot understand how such things come to be.
'The Clod and The Pebble': This is a poem that shows two differing viewpoints on love - from the angle of 'innocence' and from the angle of 'experience.' Blake's choice of the sponsors of these two points of view has been very apt. The poem comes in Songs of Experience and so it seems that the view-point expressed by the pebble, Blake's mouth piece for 'Experience', is more stressed; the clod that expresses the view-point from the angle of 'Innocence' is "trodden with the cattle's feet". The clod contends that love is primarily unselfish and sacrificing. Love yields pleasure to others and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair. But according to the pebble. love is essentially and necessarily selfish, self-centred and tyrannical. It derives its pleasure in "another's loss of ease" and builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."
The poem is very simple in that it expresses two contrary view-points of love'. But it is significant in the whole pattern of Experience. It shows how tyranny overrules the tender human virtue of love. In the sphere of experience man neglects the feelings of his fellowmen and irrespective of their pain or pleasure he sucks out what he wants from them.
London: 'London' is another major poem. This poem is an example of Blake's social consciousness. It begins like Watts's poem, 'Praise for Mercies' which begins
Whene'er I take my walks abroad.
How many poor I see.
Similarly, Blake wanders 'thro' each chartered street by the bank of the Thames and sees every face he meets stamped with the marks of woe. The streets of London echo with the cries of men and infants (a contrary picture to 'The Echoing Green'). The poet discovers that the cries of pain arise from the mind-forged manacles of the city. The woeful cry of the unfortunate chimney-sweepers is a shame on the Church. The poet hears the death-sigh of the wounded soldier whose blood drips down the walls of kingly palaces for he is killed defending his king and country. But the most bitter curse of the city is harlotry. The harlot to whom a young man goes infects both him and his family. But all are victimised by the deadening institution of the 'marriage hearse', which prohibits free and true love.
Blake's London' is typical of the world of expericnce. With the noise of cries and curses it, in a sense, resembles hell. Instead of the echoing green we have an echoing inferno which is 'bloody'; mishaps and misfortunes are the marks of this city. The streets and the river Thames are apparently 'chartered' but the irony 13 that they are in fact bound with manacles, the self-forged manacles of the society and a pandemonium of human miseries and dismay. Blake lays stress on the irresponsibility of the Church too. The Church has the duty of protecting its mem bers. But the chimney-sweepers are not even allowed to enter the churches and pray. The Church urns a blind eye on their plight.
Conclusion: The above poems are sufficient to give us a clear idea of the world of Songs of Experience. The world of Experience is a tragic world but man himself is the cause of his tragedy. Man is fallen but there is a hope of redemption struck through the poems. When man is properly moulded in the forge of 'Experience' he is liable to acquire the world of higher innocence. In his childhood man has all the freedom and liberty to play and sport. In the forges of Experience his mind and body undergo severe tests of pain but all these are unavoidable and essential for his attainment of that world where he is subjected to complete metamorphoses like the lion of the poem 'Night'. There man is no more what he was on earth and the animal is not what it was on the soil;
For washed in life's river.My bright mane for everShall shine like the goldAs I guard o'er the fold.