Blakes Art Work & Songs of Innocence and Experience Overview

        William Blake was an illustrator and painter between the years 1757-1827. The first couple of pictures in this video include portraits of himself and his art work. Some of the paintings cooperate with his poetry. But others he had engraved for Richard Gough's Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britainoetry, who employed Blake between 1774 and 1775; to draw on medieval tomb sculptures in Westminster Abbey.  This video also includes the poems "Little Lamb", "Jerusalem", and "To the Evening Star". From the age of twelve till the time he was twenty, William Blake produced some of the finest lyrical works in the English language.

          In 1789, the completed original work; The Songs of Innocence was printed. The series consists of 19 poems,  engraved with Blake's individual artwork was hand washed with colors. The Songs of Innocence was the first of Blake's incandescent books, and the poems were written from an innocent child's perspective. Some of the well known poems from this collection are "The Lamb", "A Dream", "The Chimney Sweeper", and "The Shepherd". Blake republished Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience several times, often changing the order and number of the plates.

                              

        The Songs of Experience is the second perspective of Songs of Innocence. In the Songs of Experience, there are twenty-six plates, each engraved with at least one poem and colorful illustrations relating to the text. There are twenty-six poems altogether, however each poem is not accompanied by a plate.  Shorter poems in the series can be combined with multiple poems to cover an entire plate. Lengthy poems take require more than one plate. The poems from Songs of Experience were written mainly from the perspective of an experienced person; one who had seen all the negative and evil qualities of the world and then developed bitter feelings towards those experiences. The most well known poems in Songs of Experience are: "The Tyger", "The Sick Rose", "Ah, Sunflower," "A Poison Tree" and "London". These poems are respected today, but during Blake's life, people didn't appreciate there value. Before Blake's death in 1827, the Songs of Experience sold only 20 copies. Now that his great poetry is known throughout the world, Blake is well respected as a Romantic era poet.