Themes and Styles in Songs of Experience Essay -- Innocence Songs of E

Themes and Styles in Songs of Experience With reference to at least four poems, show how they are representative of themes and styles in Songs of Experience. In the Songs of Experience â€Å"Innocence† has progressed towards â€Å"Experience†, but it is important to remember that Blake's vision is essentially dialectical: â€Å"Innocence† and â€Å"Experience† are co-related as the road to â€Å"experience† begins from â€Å"innocence†. The poems in Songs of Experience are darker in tone and outlook, affirming a bleaker (or more realistic) view of creation than their â€Å"Innocent† counterparts. Blake manifests the themes of cynicism, corruption, oppression, disillusionment and cruelty through the use of stylistic devices such as mirroring, juxtapositions, archetypes and imagery. In â€Å"The clod and the pebble†, the poem provides two contrasting attitudes, one of selfless love for others, and the second, of Love as self-absorption and possessiveness. The first stanza seems to belong to the Songs of Innocence sequence, and the final stanza to Songs of Experience, and perhaps it is left to the reader to adjudicate between the two attitudes. However, as a poem in the Songs of Experience sequence, it is important that the final words are given to the selfish Pebble rather than to the down-trodden Clod, perhaps suggesting that it is the former's attitude which is seen to be the most insightful. Blake uses imagery such as the clod of clay to represent something insignificant, like mud, downtrodden. Blake also uses alliteration on the phrase â€Å"clod of clay† to emphasize its worthlessness. This imagery also creates an impression that the clay is malleable and unformed, implying youth, ignorance, naivetà © and innocence. However, this spineless cl... ...n on the private lives of Englanders; an almost comically melodramatic scene of tombstones and Death-figure priests. It is thus perhaps too easy to dismiss this poem at once as nothing more than that. However, this simplicity allows the poem to become a didactic poem, with new levels of resonance rising from it with each reading. The level that first presents itself is explained above; the Church taking on itself the legislation and administration of morality. This Songs of Experience lyric deals with the repression of joys, desires and instincts by the church and by prohibitive morality. Given that the poem deals with a vision of a journey into the "garden", we could perhaps also view the poem as a commentary on the ways that conscience and guilt are imposed on the imagination and on what is natural and instinctual, the 'mind-forged manacles' of London.