Voices of Innocence

Abstract

As we have seen, four poems which Blake engraved for Songs of Innocence had appeared earlier in contexts which identified them as the songs of a young shepherd, Obtuse Angle, Mrs Nannicantipot’s mother, and Quid the Cynic. Many of the other poems in Songs of Innocence, such as ‘A Cradle Song’ and ‘The Little Black Boy’, are dramatic lyrics for clearly-identified speakers. Even the poems whose speakers are less sharply distinguished from the poet, such as ‘Night’ and ‘The Divine Image’, are marked as dramatic lyrics by their appearance in a volume which gives definition and expression to the state of Innocence. Innocence may be provisionally described as a state in which the human faculties are perfectly integrated, in which no being can refuse full sympathy to another, and in which the harmony of Man, God and Nature is too complete to allow a non-human conception of divinity or matter. The separate poems contribute to Blake’s celebration of this ideal, and draw added significance from it; and many critics have sought to interpret them by analysing the intricacies of their psychological drama. This can require some investigation of relevant social and intellectual contexts, such as the charity-school controversy or the writings of Swedenborg.