Experience: The Antithesis of Innocence

It is clear in reading the poetry of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience that Blake is deeply disturbed by man's loss of innocence in the face of experience. In Songs of Innocence, Blake uses pastoral imagery to describe innocence as state of being characterized by faith, love, joy, happiness and togetherness. To illustrate this notion of innocence, Blake provides the reader with images of a loving, ever-present God and a healthy, natural, green world, both of which are connected to and deeply affect man in an entirely positive way. Blake then twists these two images, of God and nature to describe experience. To Blake, experience is a state of mind in which innocence is lost and the world is dominated by little more than sorrow, despair, anger and faithlessness. In these poems, God is no longer loving and protective, but is instead now cold and uncaring, and the once nurturing, healthy earth is now a land of decay. In experience, the use of these two images as positive forces on humanity is abolished and replaced with the idea that that these two actually have a direct hand in the plight of man. In essence, innocence is lost through experience.

As has been stated, a major theme in Songs of Innocence is the

Another poem that provides evidence for the loss of faith in experience is "The Garden of Love". In "Garden of Love" although God is not mentioned specifically, it is the church that binds joy and essentially kills the once lively, beautiful nature of the Garden of Love. The narrator of this poem is clearly distraught by the current state of the lush garden in which he once played. What was once a luscious, green, flowering garden open for children to play, is now a closed chapel where priests dressed in black bind "with briars my joys and desires" ("The Garden of Love" 11-13). The presence of the killjoy priests and the locked chapel are a reflection of the God of experience. Where the God of innocence is joyful and ever present, the God of experience, like the chapel, is locked away and unattainable, and his representatives, the priests actively stifle the narrator's joy.

Another way Blake illustrates a dying world of experience in this poem is through the loss of the natural beauty of the Garden of love. When the narrator of this poem encounters and is turned away by the church and thus by God, he turns to the Garden only to find that it too is gone. He states:

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love

That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves

And tomb-stones where flowers should be;

And Priests in black gown were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys and desires ("The Garden of Love", ll.7-12).

This garden, once full of life is now full of death and decay. Where there once were "sweet flowers" there now are tombstones. Therefore, not only have men died, leaving cold stone graves behind, but have taken nature along with it with the death of the flowers. Where in the in the innocent world man and nature live harmoniously together, this joyous life is lost in experience and replaced with sorrow where man and nature instead die together. Again, the joy of innocence is lost, and replaced with the sorrow of experience.

Blake, however, not only seems to mourn the loss of nature and its effect on man, but also uses nature as a tool in the demise of man. A great example is the poem "The Poison Tree", where one man harbors anger and wrath toward his foe, and through his wrath grows a tree bearing poison fruit, eventually killing the foe. The poem states:

And I water'd it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

... Till it bore and apple bright;

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew it was mine,

And into my garden stole

When the night had veil'd the pole;

In the morning glad to see

My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree ("The Poison Tree", ll. 5-6, 10-16).

This poem speaks volumes on what Blake perceives as experience. First, it creates a scene where unity is no longer present between men, and the once abundant love of innocence has now been replaced with anger. Where man at one time would have mourned the death of another, in the world of experience, he so hates him that he is happy for him to be dead. Secondly, what this poem does is provide evidence of the use of nature as a tool used against man. Where nature once fostered peace and love, it now fosters anger and hatred. Nature is no longer the haven of the world of innocence, but now is nothing more than a poison fruit readily available use in the plight of man.

Clearly, experience to Blake is the antithesis to innocence. In Songs of Innocence, God and nature live harmoniously with man in a world of faith, love and happiness. Once this innocence is lost, Songs of Experience surfaces, and all that is left is a deeply contrasting world where God and nature are no longer a positive force and man is left in the dust, full of hatred, anger and sorrow. Through experience, man has lost all that is good in the world (faith, love, joy, etc) and is left a decaying remnant of what once was.