Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) by William Blake.
Introduction
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
Pipe a song about a Lamb!”
So I piped with merry cheer.
“Piper, pipe that song again.”
So I piped: he wept to hear.
“Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!”
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
Piper, sit down and write in a book that all may read. So he vanished from my sight, and I plucked a hollow reed. I made a rural pen and stained the water clear. I wrote my happy songs that every child may joy to hear.
How sweet is the shepherd’s sweet lot! From the morn to the evening, he strays. He shall follow his sheep all day, and his tongue shall be filled with praise. For he hears the lambs’ innocent call, and he hears the ewes’ tender reply. He is watchful while they are in peace, for they know when their shepherd is nigh.
The sun does arise and make happy the skies. The merry bells ring to welcome the spring. The skylark and thrush, the birds of the bush, sing louder around to the bells’ cheerful sound. While our sports shall be seen on the echoing green.
Old John with white hair laughs away care as he sits under the oak with the old folk. They laugh at our play and reminisce about the joys of their youth on the echoing green. But when the little ones grow weary and the sun sets, our sports come to an end. The sisters and brothers rest in the laps of their mothers like birds in a nest, and the darkening green is quiet once more.
Little Lamb, who made thee? Do you know who made thee? He gave thee life and bid thee feed by the stream and over the mead. He gave thee clothing of soft and woolly delight and a tender voice that makes all the vales rejoice. Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee, he is called by thy name for he calls himself a Lamb. He is meek and mild, and he became a little child. We are called by his name. Little Lamb, God bless thee.
My mother bore me in the southern wild, and I am black, but my soul is white. The English child is white as an angel, but I am black as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree. Sitting down before the heat of day, she took me on her lap and kissed me. Pointing to the east, she began to say, Look on the rising sun: there God does live and gives his light and heat away. Flowers and trees and beasts and men receive comfort in morning, joy in the noon day. And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love. These black bodies and this sunburnt face are but a cloud, and like a shady grove. For when our souls have learned the heat to bear, the cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice saying, ‘Come out from the grove, my love and care, and round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.’ Thus did my mother say and kissed me. And thus I say to little English boy, ‘When I from black and he from white cloud free, and round the tent of God like lambs we joy, I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear to lean in joy upon our father’s knee. And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair, and be like him and he will then love me.'”
The Blossom
Merry, merry sparrow
Under leaves so green,
A happy blossom
Sees you swift as arrow
Seek your cradle narrow,
Near my bosom.
Pretty, pretty robin
Under leaves so green,
A happy blossom
Hears you sobbing, sobbing,
Pretty, pretty robin,
Near my bosom.
The Chimney-Sweeper
When my mother died, I was very young, and my father sold me while yet my tongue could scarcely cry weep! weep!” So, I sweep chimneys and sleep in soot. There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, that curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved.
