William Blake - The Tyger & The Lamb

The Tyger

Tyger, Tyger burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand did seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger, Tyger burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake, 1757-1827



The Lamb

Little lamb, who made thee?
Does thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Does thou know who made thee?

Little lamb, I’ll tell thee;
Little lamb, I’ll tell thee:
He is callèd by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are callèd by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!

William Blake, 1757-1827

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence

 

 

Blake's frontispiece for
Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is an illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

"Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton's existential-mythic states of "Paradise" and the "Fall." Blake's categories are modes of perception that tend to coordinate with a chronology that would become standard in Romanticism: childhood is a time and a state of protected "innocence," but not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. This world sometimes impinges on childhood itself, and in any event becomes known through "experience," a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes.

The volume's "Contrary States" are sometimes signaled by patently repeated or contrasted titles: in Innocence, Infant Joy, in Experience, Infant Sorrow; in Innocence, The Lamb, in Experience, The Fly and The Tyger.


Songs of Innocence was originally a complete work first printed in 1789. It is a conceptual collection of 19 poems, engraved with artwork.

The poems are each listed below:

Introduction

The Shepherd

The Echoing Green

The Lamb

The Little Black Boy

The Blossom

The Chimney Sweeper

The Little Girl lost

The Little Girl found

The Little Boy lost

The Little Boy found

Laughing Song

A Cradle Song

The Divine Image

Holy Thursday

Night

Spring

Nurse's Song

Infant Joy

A Dream

On Another's Sorrow

Blake's title plate (No.29) for Songs of Experience

Songs of Experience is a 1794 poetry collection of 26 poems forming the second part of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Some of the poems, such as The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found were moved by Blake to Songs of Innocence, and were frequently moved between the two books.

In this collection of poems, Blake contrasts Songs of Innocence, in which he shows how the human spirit blossoms when allowed its own free movement with Songs of Experience, in which he shows how the human spirit withers after it has been suppressed and forced to conform to rules, and doctrines. In fact, Blake was an English Dissenter and actively opposed the doctrines of the Anglican Church, which tells its members to suppress their feelings. Blake showed how he believed this was wrong through his poems in Songs of Experience.

The most notable of the poems in Songs of Experience are: "The Tyger", "The Sick Rose", "Ah, Sunflower," "A Poison Tree" and "London". Although these poems today are enjoyed and appreciated, in Blake's time, they were not appreciated at all.

Blake lived this whole life in poverty and in heavy debt. Songs of Experience only sold 20 copies before his death in 1827. It is now used in the school GCSE and A-level curriculum.

Introduction (at wikisource)

Earth's Answer

The Clod and the Pebble

Holy Thursday

The Little Girl Lost

The Little Girl Found

The Chimney Sweeper

Nurse's Song

The Sick Rose

The Fly (at wikisource)

The Angel

The Tyger

My Pretty Rose Tree

Ah! Sun-Flower (at wikisource)

The Lily

The Garden of Love

The Little Vagabond

London

The Human Abstract (at wikisource)

Infant Sorrow

A Poison Tree

A Little Boy Lost (at wikisource)

A Little Girl Lost

To Tirzah

The Schoolboy (at wikisource)

The Voice of the Ancient Bard (at wikisource)

Musical Settings

 

Poems from both books have been set to music by many composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sven-David Sandström, and Benjamin Britten. Individual poems have also been set by, among others, John Tavener, Jah Wobble, Tangerine Dream. A modified version of the poem "The Little Black Boy" was set to music in the song "My Mother Bore Me" from Maury Yeston's musical Phantom. Folk musician Greg Brown recorded sixteen of the poems on his 1987 album Songs of Innocence and of Experience[1] and by Finn Coren in his Blake Project.

Poet Allen Ginsberg believed the poems were originally intended to be sung, and that through study of the rhyme and meter of the works, a Blakean performance could be approximately replicated. In 1969, he conceived, arranged, directed, sang on, and played piano and harmonium for an album of songs entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg (1970).^[2]

The composer William Bolcom completed a setting of the entire collection of poems in 1984. In 2005, a recording of Bolcom's work by Leonard Slatkin, the Michigan State Childrens Choir, and the University of Michigan on the Naxos label won 3 Grammy Awards: Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Best Classical Album.^[3]

 

 

References

1. ^ [1]
2. ^ http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Ginsberg-Blake.php
3. ^ http://www.music.umich.edu/about/BolcomGrammy.pdf