Songs of Innocence

By William Blake

William Blake's innovations in engraving techniques brought about his brilliant synthesis of visual and poetic art and signaled the beginning of his famous "Illuminated Books," of which the Songs of Innocence was the first and most popular. Unfortunately, Blake's vision is generally known to the world in amputated form: because of the difficulty and expense of reproducing his original conception, most editions of Blake's work offer only the printed text, with no trace of the visual counterpart so essential to his "System."
This new, facsimile edition of the Songs of Innocence reproduces Blake's color plates in a fashion which the artist himself would have approved. The 31 plates — printed on facing pages which are the same size of Blake's own first edition — offer one of the more brightly colored versions of this significant volume, no two copies of which are the same. As a special aid to readers, a typographical reprint of the text of poems follows the plates. Such classic "songs" as "The Lamb" and "The Chimney Sweeper" are now accessible to all in the symbiotic union of poem and picture that is crucial to a total understating of Blake's mind and art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Jul 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486140582

William Blake

William Blake (1757–1827) was an English poet and visual artist often linked to the Romantic movement. As a youth in London, he was primarily educated at home before becoming an engraver’s apprentice. Later, Blake would attend the Royal Academy and eventually find work in publishing. His debut, Poetical Sketches, was printed in 1783 followed by Songs of Innocence in 1789. The latter is arguably his most popular collection due to its vivid imagery and thought-provoking themes.

Book preview

Songs of Innocence

by

William Blake

Dover Publications, Inc., New York

Copyright

Copyright © 1971 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 1971, is an unabridged republication of the 1789 edition from the copy in the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection in the Library of Congress. A Publisher’s Note, contents, and complete printed text of the poems have been added for the Dover edition.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 70-165396

International Standard Book Number

eISBN-13: 978-0-486-13988-3

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

22764224

www.doverpublications.com

Contents

Frontispiece

Title Page

Introduction

The Shepherd

Infant Joy

On Another’s Sorrow

The School Boy

Holy Thursday

Nurse’s Song

Laughing Song

The Little Black Boy

The Voice of the Ancient Bard

The Ecchoing Green

The Chimney Sweeper

The Divine Image

A Dream

The Little Girl Lost

The Little Girl Found

The Little Boy Lost

The Little Boy Found

A Cradle Song

Spring

The Blossom

The Lamb

Night

Publisher’s Note

IN 1789 William Blake, a London journeyman engraver barely thirty, printed the plates of a most unusual book. The first of his Illuminated Books, Songs of Innocence consisted of thirty-one color plates

Reviews for Songs of Innocence

[brandonachey · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Echoing Green is an excellent poem by William Blake. It is a great meditation on the playful nature of youth and the inevitability that, eventually, we all do grow older and age. It has good metaphorical imagery and demonstrates different elements of poetry extraordinarily well, such as rhyme scheme and slant rhyme. However, I am unsure if children in the 4th-5th grades will be able to really attach themselves to it. The language is very archaic and slightly verbose. If children had the opportunity, as an activity of some sort, to put this poem into their own words, I think it would prove to be very beneficial in the classroom.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oh my God, you guys, did you know William Blake didn't have any children? The author of "Infant Joy" and "Laughing Song," of lines like "Pretty joy! / Sweet joy, but two days old. / Sweet joy I call thee: / Thou dost smile, / I sing the while, / Sweet joy befall thee!" That is the most heartbreaking thing I hope to hear today.Anyway, the lyric power of Blake's short, thumping lines makes for a lot of instantaneous tear-jerkers here, although these poems could also have done with a dash of his mystic philosophy: I'm all for the innocence of children, but the worldview on display here is sort of carpingly simplistic for the most part. Where it rises above is in the first previews of Songs of Experience, like "The Chimney-Sweeper"--which I refuse to read as anything other than proto-Marxist--where the towheaded children are lost in a deeper sense than their peers who are lucky enough to get found by lachrymose lions and angels, and there's no happy reunion with M and P. Where it sinks below is in poems like "The Little Black Boy," which though well-constructed and doing som enice play with the heat of the African sun and the heat of God's love still just fights racism by making the black boy's soul white and is thus a cut below "Am I not a man and a brother?" Anyway, this is good for people who aren't given to sentimentality to dip into in their sentimental moments.

[big_bang_gorilla · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Being a handsome reproduction which includes Blake's lettering and illustration. The texts in plain typeface are appended for a little easier reading. If one enjoys the poems and Blake's art, this is a good edition to own.

[wishanem · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It was interesting to see the earlier work of a famous poet, especially reproduced with all the original art and settings. Unfortunately, there's a good reason that I encountered Blake's later in school and not his early stuff. Some of the entries were stronger than others, but none of them made me want to memorize them.