William Blake Songs of Experience (copy)

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday

“Is this a holy thing to see, in a rich and fruitful land: Babes reduced to misery, fed with cold usurous hand?”

Emotive language, Usurous

Holy Thursday

“Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy?”

Holy Thursday

“And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak and bare”

Holy Thursday

“And their ways are filled with thorns”

The Chimney Sweeper

“A little black thing among the snow,”

The Chimney Sweeper

“Crying ‘weep,weep’ in notes of woe!”

The Chimney Sweeper

“They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe.”

The Chimney Sweeper

“They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his priest and King, who make a heaven of our misery.”

Nurse’s song

“And whisperings are in the dale”

Nurse’s Song

“The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale”

Nurse’s Song

“Your spring and your day are wasted in play, And your winter and night in disguise.”

The Garden of Love

“A chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.”

The Garden of Love

“And the gates of this chapel were shut, And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door”

The Garden of Love

“And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be,”

The Little Vagabond

“Dear mother, dear mother, the church is cold, But the ale-house is healthy and pleasant and warm.”

The Little Vagabond

“And God, like a father rejoicing to see

His children as pleasant and happy as he, would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the barrel”

London

“Near where the chartered thames does flow”

London

“And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe”

The Tiger

Tiger tiger burning bright in the forest of the night (repeated)

The Tiger

What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry (repeated)

The Tiger

What the hammer what the chain in what furnace was thy brain

The Tiger

Did he who made the lamb make the lion

London

The mind-forged manacles

London

Hapless soldiers sigh runs in blood down palace walls

London

And like swift plagues the marriage hearse

A Poison Tree

I told my wrath, my wrath did end/I told it not my wrath did grow

A Poison Tree

Til it bore an apple bright and he knew that it was mine

A Poison Tree

Glad I see my foe outstretched beneath the tree

Infant Sorrow

My mother groaned, my father wept

Infant Sorrow

Helpless naked piping loud

Infant Sorrow

I thought best to sulk upon my mother’s breast