In the first poem, the poem representing innocence, the nurse is in the background image as a pretty, young woman, sitting and reading by a tree. Her mood is peaceful and at rest "When the voices of children are heard on the green / And laughing is heard on the hill." (Blake 23) The drawing and the poem also convey a sense of peace and trust. The children are naive and vulnerable to the pain, the sorrow, and the evils of the perverted world; yet their faith in the fact that they are protected by the nurse, like a lamb by his shepherd, is c

The poems of the Songs of Innocence celebrate trust and innocence. They also celebrate the wisdom of the innocent through the children and their argument to continue to play. But as we see from the child of experience in "Infant Sorrow," innocence is not immune to the suffering of the world. The poems in the Songs of Innocence are truly that of innocence, leaving one to perceive only goodness. The Songs of Experience, on the other hand, are full of negative perceptions drawn from experience. These poems give a true sense of loss, not only of innocence, but of also one's sense of trust and honesty, leaving the person to withdraw from society. The Songs of Experience left me with the knowledge of despair. This knowledge given to all other readers, including me, by Blake are the equivalent of the commandments, to compare to the Bible. They are a set of stories that I can relate to and perhaps model after, or at least learn from them.

The innocence and joy these children possess are mirrored in "Infant Joy." "Infant Joy" is about a baby who is just two days old. There is a short dialogue between the baby and the baby's mother: "I happy am/ Joy is my name, /Sweet joy befall thee!" (ll. 3-5), which describes the simplest form of innocence and joy Blake could ever portray. The poem continues with the sweetness and innocence that a baby represents.

I truly enjoyed reading William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. The poems were easy for me to follow and I can relate to them. These poems, as I am sure was Blake's intentions, have opened my eyes to a few experiences I would not want to go through. Now that I have experienced through the eyes of the characters in the poems, I will work on not doing or going through the same things they did. With that, I think Blake would be pleased at the affects of his work.

In the next stanza, the nurse seems to step into her knowledge of experience:

Then come home my children, the sun is gone down

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Approximate Word count = 2019
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)