CHAPTER XIII.
THE SONGS OF EXPERIENCE. 1794. [ÆT 37.]
In the Songs of Experience, put forth in 1794, as complement to the Songs of Innocence of 1789, we come again on more lucid writing than the Books of Prophecy last noticed,—writing freer from mysticism and abstractions, if partaking of the same colour of thought. Songs of Innocence and Experience, showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul: the author and printer, W. Blake, is the general title now given. The first series, quite in keeping with its name, had been of far the more heavenly temper. The second, produced during an interval of another five years, bears internal evidence of later origin, though in the same rank as to poetic excellence. As the title fitly shadows, it is of grander, sterner calibre, of gloomier wisdom. Strongly contrasted, but harmonious phases of poetic thought are presented by the two series.
One poem in the Songs of Experience happens to have been quoted often enough (first by Allan Cunningham in connection with Blake's name), to have made its strange old Hebrew-like grandeur, its Oriental latitude yet force of eloquence, comparatively familiar:—The Tiger. To it Charles Lamb refers: 'I have heard of his poems,' writes he, 'but have never seen them. There is one to a tiger, beginning—
Tiger! tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
which is glorious!'
