And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away;
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart's delight.
So he took his wings and fled;
Then the man blushed very red.
I dried my tears and armed my tears
With ten thousand shields and spears.
Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled.
And gray hairs were on my head.
Generally speaking, the Songs of Experience may be said to answer to their title. They exhibit an awakening of thought and an occupation with metaphysical problems alien to the Songs of Innocence. Such a stanza as this shows that Blake's mind had been busy:—
Nought loves another as itself
Nor venerates another so;
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.
These ideas, however, are always conveyed, as in the remainder of the poem quoted, through the medium of a concrete fact represented by the poet. Perhaps the finest example of this fusion of imagination and thought is this stanza of the most striking and best known of all the poems, "The Tiger":—
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see:
Did He who made the lamb make thee?
An evident, though probably unconscious, reminiscence of "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy," and like it for that extreme closeness to the inmost essence of things which the author of the Book of Job enjoyed in virtue of the primitive simplicity of his age and environment, and Blake through a childlike temperament little short of preternatural in an age like ours. It may be added, that although the pieces in Songs of Innocence and Songs
