The individual poems in Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience must be read in the context of the collection as a whole? Do you agree with this assertion? Support answer with evidence from the poems.
William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience was written between 1788 and 1801. "Songs of Innocence" is a collection of nineteen individual poems, including an introductory poem. "Songs of Experience," which also begins with an introduction, is a collection of twenty-seven poems. "Songs of Experience" initially contained twenty-three poems. Between 1794 and 1801, Blake added four poems to "Songs of Experience" (Kazin, p. 118).
Poetry is often defined as a language that says more than the words describe (Perrine and Arp, p. 3). This is because the language of poetry is symbolic -- the words transcend their ordinary meaning. At the very least, a poem contains a whole idea; its theme is presented to the audience in such a way the sentiment is accessible.
The Innocence collection describes the world through the eyes of a child. For example, "The Little Boy Lost" tells of a little boy who loses his father in the dark:
Father! Father! Where are you going?
The night was dark, no father was there;
In "The Little Boy Found" the child is rescued by God and returned to his weeping mother:
He kissed the child & by the hand led
According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the "Songs of Innocence" were modeled on street ballads and rhymes that were popular with children in Blake's time. They proclaim a world overseen by a beneficent and protective God who has a human face as described in "The Divine Image":
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