William Blake’s Contraries
Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul
An exhaustive companion to the paired poems of Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789–1794). Each pair reveals complementary visions of the same human reality—innocence and experience—neither complete without the other.
“Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.”— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Why Contraries?
Blake published Songs of Innocence in 1789 and combined them with Songs of Experience in 1794 under the full title Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. He did not present innocence as pure good and experience as pure evil. Instead he insisted that both states are necessary; truth emerges only when they are held together.
Many poems were deliberately written as counterparts. Some share identical titles; others are linked by opposing titles or shared imagery. The pairs below form the core of Blake’s contrary system.
The Lamb & The Tyger
The Lamb
Little Lamb who made thee Dost thou know who made thee Gave thee life & bid thee feed By the stream & o’er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing wooly bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice! Little Lamb who made thee Dost thou know who made thee Little Lamb I’ll tell thee, Little Lamb I’ll tell thee! He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb: He is meek & he is mild, He became a little child: I a child & thou a lamb, We are called by his name. Little Lamb God bless thee. Little Lamb God bless thee.
The Tyger
Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp! When the stars threw down their spears And water’d heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Analysis as Contraries
The most famous of Blake’s pairs. “The Lamb” presents a gentle, pastoral Creator who is himself a Lamb and a child—meek, mild, protective. The speaker (a child) answers the question of origin with serene certainty.
“The Tyger” confronts the same question from the opposite pole: who could create a creature of such fearful symmetry, forged in fire and hammer? The famous line “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” forces the reader to hold both visions of the divine at once. Blake refuses to resolve the paradox; the contraries remain necessary to any complete vision of God and of human nature.
Infant Joy & Infant Sorrow
Infant Joy
“I have no name: I am but two days old.” What shall I call thee? “I happy am, Joy is my name.” Sweet joy befall thee! Pretty joy! Sweet joy but two days old, Sweet joy I call thee: Thou dost smile, I sing the while, Sweet joy befall thee!
Infant Sorrow
My mother groand! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud; Like a fiend hid in a cloud. Struggling in my fathers hands: Striving against my swadling bands: Bound and weary I thought best To sulk upon my mothers breast.
Analysis as Contraries
Birth itself is seen under two lights. In Innocence the newborn is pure joy, already self-naming, greeted with song. In Experience the same arrival is a leap into danger; the infant is a “fiend hid in a cloud,” struggling against the first constraints of the world (swaddling bands, parental hands).
Blake shows that the state of the soul colours even the primal moment of existence. Joy and sorrow are not sequential stages but simultaneous possibilities.
The Divine Image & The Human Abstract
The Divine Image
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love All pray in their distress; And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is God, our father dear, And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is Man, his child and care. For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk, or Jew; Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.
The Human Abstract
Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody Poor: And Mercy no more could be, If all were as happy as we; And mutual fear brings peace; Till the selfish loves increase. Then Cruelty knits a snare, And spreads his baits with care. He sits down with holy fears, And waters the ground with tears; Then Humility takes its root Underneath his foot. Soon spreads the dismal shade Of Mystery over his head; And the Catterpiller and Fly, Feed on the Mystery. And it bears the fruit of Deceit, Ruddy and sweet to eat; And the Raven his nest has made In its thickest shade. The Gods of the earth and sea, Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree But their search was all in vain: There grows one in the Human Brain.
Analysis as Contraries
“The Divine Image” celebrates the four virtues—Mercy, Pity, Peace, Love—as both divine and human. Wherever these qualities appear, God dwells; the human form itself is divine.
“The Human Abstract” (originally drafted as “The Human Image”) reverses the claim. Pity and Mercy exist only because we create poverty and unhappiness. Peace arises from mutual fear. From this soil grows a Tree of Mystery whose fruit is Deceit and whose shade harbours the Raven. The tree is not found in Nature; it grows only “in the Human Brain.” Blake thus exposes how institutional religion and rational morality can turn living virtues into abstract, repressive systems.
Note: Blake also engraved a shorter, sharper contrary called “A Divine Image” (Cruelty has a human heart…), but he preferred the more complex “Human Abstract” for the published collection.
Nurse’s Song (Innocence & Experience)
Nurse’s Song
When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And every thing else is still. “Then come home my children, the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise Come come leave off play, and let us away Till the morning appears in the skies.” “No no let us play, for it is yet day And we cannot go to sleep Besides in the sky, the little birds fly And the hills are all coverd with sheep.” “Well well go & play till the light fades away And then go home to bed.” The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh’d And all the hills ecchoed.
Nurse’s Song
When the voices of children are heard on the green And whisperings are in the dale The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale. Then come home my children, the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise Your spring & your day, are wasted in play And your winter and night in disguise.
Analysis as Contraries
Both poems open with the same sound—children’s voices on the green—yet the nurse’s response is transformed. In Innocence her heart is at rest; she yields to the children’s desire to keep playing and the hills themselves echo their joy. In Experience the same voices summon memories that turn her face “green and pale.” Play is now waste; spring is already shadowed by winter and disguise.
The identical setting and near-identical first lines make the shift in consciousness unmistakable: the same world, two contrary states of the soul looking at it.
Holy Thursday (Innocence & Experience)
Holy Thursday
Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean The children walking two & two in red & blue & green Grey-headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow O what a multitude they seemd these flowers of London town Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door
Holy Thursday
Is this a holy thing to see, In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reducd to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine. And their fields are bleak & bare. And their ways are fill’d with thorns. It is eternal winter there. For where-e’er the sun does shine, And where-e’er the rain does fall: Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall.
Analysis as Contraries
Both poems describe the annual Charity School service at St Paul’s on Ascension Day. Innocence sees a radiant multitude of “flowers of London town,” “multitudes of lambs,” whose song is like harmonious thunder; the aged guardians are “wise.” Experience asks the devastating question: is this holy? In a rich land, children are fed by a “cold and usurous hand.” Their cry is not joy but trembling; the land is one of eternal winter.
Blake forces the reader to see the same social ritual through two eyes—one that accepts the official narrative of benevolence, one that perceives the structural cruelty beneath it.
The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence & Experience)
The Chimney Sweeper
When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry “’weep! ’weep! ’weep! ’weep!” So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curl’d like a lambs back, was shav’d, so I said, “Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head’s bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.” And so he was quiet, & that very night, As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black. And by came an Angel who had a bright key And he open’d the coffins & set them all free; Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run And wash in a river and shine in the Sun. Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind. And the Angel told Tom if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for his father & never want joy. And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark And got with our bags & our brushes to work. Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
The Chimney Sweeper
A little black thing among the snow: Crying “weep, weep,” in notes of woe! “Where are thy father & mother? say?” “They are both gone up to the church to pray. Because I was happy upon the heath, And smil’d among the winters snow: They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe. And because I am happy, & dance & sing, They think they have done me no injury: And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King Who make up a heaven of our misery.”
Analysis as Contraries
Innocence still clings to the consoling dream: an Angel will free the boys, and duty will be rewarded. The final couplet (“if all do their duty, they need not fear harm”) is both the child’s faith and, for the adult reader, a bitter irony.
Experience strips away the dream. The child knows exactly who is responsible—parents, Priest, and King—who have constructed “a heaven of our misery.” Happiness itself becomes evidence used against the victim. The two poems together expose how religious and social ideology can sanctify exploitation while the exploited still try to believe in a redemptive order.
The Little Boy Lost & A Little Boy Lost
The Little Boy Lost
“Father, father, where are you going? O do not walk so fast. Speak father, speak to your little boy Or else I shall be lost.” The night was dark no father was there The child was wet with dew. The mire was deep, & the child did weep And away the vapour flew.
A Little Boy Lost
“Nought loves another as itself Nor venerates another so, Nor is it possible to Thought A greater than itself to know: And Father, how can I love you, Or any of my brothers more? I love you like the little bird That picks up crumbs around the door.” The Priest sat by and heard the child, In trembling zeal he siez’d his hair, He led him by his little coat, And all admir’d the Priestly care. And standing on the altar high, “Lo what a fiend is here!” said he, “One who sets reason up for judge Of our most holy Mystery.” The weeping child could not be heard, The weeping parents wept in vain; They strip’d him to his little shirt, And bound him in an iron chain. And burn’d him in a holy place, Where many had been burn’d before: The weeping parents wept in vain. Are such things done on Albions shore.
Analysis as Contraries
In Innocence the lost boy is simply separated from his father in the dark; the vapour (will-o’-the-wisp) leads him astray, yet the companion poem “The Little Boy Found” restores him through divine care. The danger is temporary and natural.
In Experience the boy is lost because he speaks a philosophical truth: that love of another cannot exceed love of self, and that thought cannot know a greater than itself. For this the Priest seizes him, chains him, and burns him as a heretic. The “holy place” becomes the site of judicial murder. Blake’s indictment of institutional religion reaches its fiercest pitch here.