The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

I. Man cannot naturally Percieve but through his natural or bodily organs. II. Man by his reasoning power can only compare & judge of what he has already perciev'd. III. From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements none could deduce a fourth or fifth. IV. None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions. V. Man's desires are limited by his perceptions; none can desire what he has not perciev'd. VI. The desires & perceptions of man, untaught by any thing but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense. Conclusion. If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things, & stand still unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again.

1788

There Is No Natural Religion1

[b] I. Man's perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception; he percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover. 1. In this selection Blake presents his version of tions (in opposition to those in the preceding tract) English empiricism, which derives all mental con-that knowledge is not limited to the physical tent (including the evidences from which, in "nat-senses, but is as unbounded as the infinite desires ural religion," reason is held to prove the existence of humankind and its godlike capacity for infinite of God) from perceptions by the physical senses. vision. 1. In this third document Blaki? presents his asser

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INTRODUCTION / 81

II. Reason, or the ratio2 of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more. [Ill lacking]

IV. The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a universe would soon become a mill with complicated wheels. V. If the many become the same as the few when possess'd, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul. Less than All cannot satisfy Man. VI. If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot. VII. The desire of Man being Infinite, the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite. Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only. Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.

1788

FROM SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE1

SHEWING THE TWO CONTRARY STATES OF THE HUMAN SOUL

FROM SONGS OF INNOCENCE

Introduction

Piping down the valleys wild Piping songs of pleasant glee On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me,

5 "Pipe a song about a Lamb"; So I piped with merry chear; "Piper pipe that song again"� So I piped, he wept to hear.

2. In Latin ratio signifies both "reason" and "calculation." Blake applies the term derogatorily to the 18th-century concept of reason as a calculating faculty whose operations are limited to sense perceptions. 1. Songs of Innocence was etched in 1789, and in 1794 was combined with additional poems under the title Songs of Innocence and of Experience; this collection was reprinted at various later times with varying arrangements of the poems. In his songs of innocence Blake assumes the stance that he is writing "happy songs / Every child may joy to hear," but they do not all depict an innocent and happy world; many of them incorporate injustice, evil, and suffering. These aspects of the fallen world, however, are represented as they appear to a "state" of the human soul that Blake calls "innocence" and that he expresses in a simple pastoral language, in the tradition both of Isaac Watts's widely read Divine Songs for Children (1715) and of the picture-books for child readers pioneered by mid-eighteenth-century booksellers such as John Newbery. The vision of the same world, as it appears to the "contrary" state of the soul that Blake calls "experience," is an ugly and terrifying one of poverty, disease, prostitution, war, and social, institutional, and sexual repression, epitomized in the ghastly representation of modern London. Though each stands as an independent poem, a number of the songs of innocence have a matched counterpart, or "contrary," in the songs of experience. Thus "Infant Joy" is paired with "Infant Sorrow," and the meek "Lamb" reveals its other aspect of divinity in the flaming, wrathful "Tyger."

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10"Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy songs of happy chear"; So I sung the same again While he wept with joy to hear. 15"Piper sit thee down and write In a book that all may read"�So he vanish'd from my sight. And I pluck'd a hollow reed, 20And I made a rural pen, And I stain'd the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear. 1789 The Ecchoing Green The Sun does arise, And make happy the skies. The merry bells ring

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To welcome the Spring.

5 The sky-lark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around, To the bells' chearful sound. While our sports shall be seen

10 On the Ecchoing Green.

Old John with white hair Does laugh away care, Sitting under the oak, Among the old folk.