LITTLE LAMB, WHO MADE THEE?

SONGS OF INNOCENCE
BY

WILLIAM BLAKE

in With a Preface by Thomas Seccombe and

Twelve Coloured IIlustrations by Honor C. Appleton

HERBERT & DANIEL

21 MADDOX STREET, LONDON, W.
628923

'

'Jo
SONGS OF INNOCENCE
 List of Illustrations

1. Little lamb, who made thee ? -

Frontispiece
2. Piping down the valleys wild -
facing page i

for rest - - 6
3. Ready
4. Under leaves so green
13
5. Father, father, where are you going ? 18
6. Farewell, green fields !
,,28
7- Spring 33
8. Nurse's Song n 36
9. Infant Joy -
38
10.

11.

12.
Laughing Song
The School-Boy
On Another's Sorrow
-

... -
,,43
4I
 Preface

are few careers like Blake's for teaching the

THEREimportance of minorities. He was born under
George II. in the year of Dyer's Fleece and Wilkie's
Epigoniad. His first poems were issued in 1783, when
Blair was still braying the Ars Poetica of Pope, and
when Pope in homespun, George Crabbe to wit, was
the
just commencing his poetical career with The Village.
Poetical Sketches came two years before Cowper's Task,
three years before the Kilmarnock Burns. Yet there
had always been a nonconformist minority, a still, small
voice of the spirit in revolt against the formal school who
exalted the letter of verse against the spiritual essence
of poetry this last is not, as is sometimes held, ab-
;

sorbed by the creation of beauty in words, but is

primarily concerned with the promulgation of original
truth which has to be raised by emotion to a higher
power than it is possible to express in prose. Thus, in the
very year of Blake's birth, 1757, Joseph Warton raised
the symbol of revolt against the school of verse epigram
and poetic diction in his famous Essay on A. Pope. The

vn
 PREFACE
romantic renaissance had, in a sense, begun and from ;

itsprogenitors, above all, we may be sure, from Percy,

Gray, Collins, Christopher Smart, Ossian, and last, but
not least, Chatterton, William Blake derived both nutri-
ment and direction. Few poets in their turn have
influenced more of their craft than Blake.
Like Spenser,
he has proved a poet's poetbut the influence was not
;

immediate. Poets, like other great men, are apt to

express the mood of a minority often a very small
minority. But Blake was amazingly isolated. Lamb,
Coleridge, Wordsworth, and even the curio-connoisseur,
Crabb Robinson, considered him to be hopelessly insane.
If he appeared mad then to such as these, how shall he

appear to the average reader of to-day ?

By birth, Blake was a Londoner. His father was a
London shop-keeper and dissenter. Most of the poet's
life was spent London's duskiest recesses, and much
in
of his youth, like Turner's, was devoted to sketching
monuments in our gloomy churches, or copying en-
gravings. He had a boyish love for grand literature
the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, Ben Jonson. He sus-
pected nature- worship. He disliked explicit statement
in poetry, which he regarded as appropriate to idiots.

Very poor, and below the average height, he was yet very
dignified and attractive especially to children. He had
the singular assurance of the mystic, and from his earliest
day he had visions and dreamt dreams. He spoke with

vi u
 PREFACE
Socrates and Jesus, grey luminous visions larger than life.
Lot sat to him for a portrait. He saw the ghost of a flea
and witnessed a fairy's funeral.
At the age of twelve he was writing verse. How early
he caught the unique levity of Elizabethan lyricism is
shown in the Poetical Sketches of 1783. James Blake
did wisely by his sensitive, impulsive, visionary son.
Though Tatham says that Blake's mother once beat him
for asserting that he had seen Ezekiel sitting beneath a
tree, the poet seems to have exercised his visionary
faculties for the most part unmolested. He was no more
than four years old when he saw " God put his forehead
to the window," which, according to his wife, reporting
the matter to Crabb Robinson, " set him a-screaming."
Later, in one of his long country walks, he saw angels in
a tree. During the whole of his life the denizens of ghost-
land compassed him about. His men and women all
have ghosts inside them.
On being taken to Ryland, the King's engraver, with
a view to apprenticeship, Blake, then aged fourteen,
made a prophecy which was fulfilled in a manner start-
ling enough to shake modern belief in the all- explanatory
u The man's face looks as if he
powers of coincidence.
will live to be hanged," said the boy and, twelve years
;

later, Ryland was the last man to be hanged at Tyburn.

Blake was finally apprenticed to Basire, an engraver whose
firm and sound, if somewhat lifeless, work confirmed

IX
 PREFACE
his liking for a severer art than was then in vogue.
In 1778 he was, for a short time, a student under Moser
in the Antique School of the Royal Academy. About
1780 he started w ork on his own account by engraving
r

some of Stothard's early designs; and this year, his

"
picture, The Death of Earl Godwin," was hung in the
Royal Academy's first exhibition at Somerset House.
Stothard introduced Blake to Flaxman, through whom
he came to know Fuseli. For many years Flaxman
remained his friend and admirer; Fuseli also. His
epigrams against them are, it is true, more pointed than
friendly. But the epigrams were j otted down in moments
of anger, spurred by inappreciation and misunderstand-
ing The history of Blake's friendships is a record first
of warm affection, then, apparently, of equally warm
quarrels and of only half-supported accusations on his
part ; but, if it be recollected that he lived in his art and
imagination, that artistic opposition and spiritual mis-
understanding were to him what assault and battery are
to the generality of men so that if a man's lack of

sympathy interfered with his visions, he was prepared

to call him villain or murderer and, further, that he was
at all times impatient of any compromise whatsoever,
and vehement to defend the knowledge he had come by
intuitively, theneasy to understand that quarrels
it is

were almost and to conclude that, however

inevitable,
violent in expression, they were not really more blame-
 PREFACE

worthy than the quarrels of other and less acutely

sensitive men.
In August, 1782, despite some opposition from the shop,
he married Catherine, daughter of Wm. and Ann Boucher
(theirgreengrocery appeared less than genteel to heredi-
tary hosiers), aged twenty, beautiful and slender, with
bright eyes, and a very white hand. No man of genius
ever had a better wife. To -the last she called him
u Mr.
Blake," while he, w e are told, frequently spoke of
r

her as " his beloved." The most beautiful reference to

her in his letters is one in a letter of i6th September,
"
1800, to Hayley, where he calls her my dear and too
careful and over-joyous woman," and says "Eartham
will be my first temple and altar ; my wife is like a flame
of many colours of precious jewels whenever she hears
it named." He taught her to write, and the copy-book
titles to some
of his water-colours are probably hers ;

to draw, so that after his death she finished some of his

designs and to help him in the colouring of his engrav-
;

ings. A story is
told, on the authority of Samuel Palmer,
that they would both look into the flames of burning
coals, and draw grotesque figures which they saw there,
hers quite unlike his. " It is quite certain," says Crabb
Robinson, "that she believed in all his visions." She
would walk with him into the country, whole summer
days, says Tatham, and far into the night. And when he
rose in the night to write down what was " dictated " to

XI
 PREFACE
him, she would rise and sit by him and hold his hand.
"She would get up in the night," says the unnamed friend
"
quoted by Gilchrist, when he was under his very fierce
inspirations, which were as if they would tear him asunder,
while he was yielding himself to the Muse, or whatever
else it could be called, sketching and writing. And so
terrible a task did this seem to be, that she had to sit
motionless and silent, only to stay him mentally, without
moving hand or foot; this for hours, and night after night."
" His him a very
wife being to patient woman," says
Tatham, who speaks of Mrs. Blake as "an irradiated
"
saint," he fancied that while she looked on him as he
worked, her sitting quite still by his side, doing nothing,
soothed his impetuous mind and he has many a time,
;

when a strong desire presented itself to overcome any

difficulty in his plates or drawings, in the middle of the
night, risen, and requested her to get up with him, and
sit by which she as cheerfully acquiesced."
his side, in
u
Rigid, punctual, firm, precise," she has been described ;

a good housewife and a good cook refusing to have a ;

servant, not only because of the cost, but because no

servant could be scrupulous enough to please her.
41
Finding," says Tatham, "(as Mrs. Blake declared, and
as every one else knows), the more service the more
inconvenience, she did all the work herself kept
. . .
;

the house clean and herself tidy, besides printing all

Blake's numerous engravings, which was a task sufficient

xn
 PREFACE
for any industrious woman." Blake valued her as she
deserved.
In 1784 Blake, with Parker, a fellow engraver,
opened a print-selling shop next door to his birth-place
(28 Broad Street, Golden Square). The following year
Robert, Blake's favourite brother and pupil, died, and,
giving up his share in the business, Blake moved to
28 Poland Street. Here one night the process by which
he printed his works suggested itself to him, or, as he
fancied, was revealed to him by Robert's spirit. The
designs and text were drawn and written on metal plates
with an acid-resisting varnish. After prolonged immer-
sion in an acid bath, the parts so protected stood in
and could be used like type for printing in any
relief,
one ground-colour. Blake and his wife further coloured
each copy by hand. He mixed his colours with diluted
glue, a process revealed to him by St. Joseph. The
volume produced in this singular way and circulated
among a small circle in 1789 as Songs of Innocence is
thus a kind of illuminated missal, in which every page is
" a window
open in heaven." It is impossible to roam in
this little paradise of a score poems without experiencing
that emotion which is the aim of poetry. The lofty
first

isolation of Blake's ideals, the unmistakable character of

his poetic vocation, the mystic order of his faith, which
seems to have derived less from Boehmen and Sweden-
borg than from one of the Hebrew seers of the Holy

xin
 PREFACE
Bible thoughts such as these combine to inspire the
reader with a certain feeling of awe, which is indeed the
right spirit in which to approach such a genius as Blake.
Blake's lyrical work constitutes his most precious
legacy, and of this the Songs of Innocence (1789), with
their fearlessness of absolute naivete, form the central
panel the two wings respectively being the Poetical
Sketches (1783) and the Songs of Experience (1794). The
Songs of Innocence is the first work produced in the
form of illuminated printing peculiar to Blake. The
thirty-one plates were impressed upon seventeen octavo
leaves, coloured by hand, the leaves then strung together
by Mrs. Blake with thin cord, and the completed work
sold for a crown not one-fiftieth of what they would
fetch to-day. Blake thus produced his poetry in the
fullest sense of the word. He also composed airs for
his lyrics, and sang them. They suggest inothing so
"
much, perhaps, as the ayres," or divisions on a ground,
produced for the enchanting school of Elizabethan
lyrist-musicians. This volume contains poems like bird-
carols a voice seems to sing and soar and choir aloft
of itself: each word is a prism, reflecting many hues,
past and and now and again comes an ultra-
future,
violet ray. Three of these poems, "A little Boy Lost,"
"Holy Thursday," and "Nurse's Song/ had been in-
cluded in an extraordinary play by Blake entitled u An
Island in the Moon (1784). One or two were afterwards

xiv
 PREFACE
transferred to Songs of Experience? Some of the poems
"
there are pendants to the earlier series. The School-
Boy," beginning
" Summer morn
I love to rise on a
When birds are singing on every tree :

The distant huntsman winds his horn,

And the skylark sings with me ;
"
Oh, what sweet company !

is well attuned to Songs of Innocence, and would have

"
been welcome among them. 2 The " Cradle Song in the
later set, though very beautiful, is hardly a match for
" Sweet Dreams form a shade." There is nothing
anywhere to match "Holy Thursday," "The Lamb,"
u
Infant Joy," "Nurse's Song," and the tender and
u
mystic Dream." This last has an early Miltonic rhythm,
but Blake as a rule has more affinity with the unpreme-
ditated air of earlier and freer songsters, such as Lodge,
Breton, Shakespeare, and Fletcher. The children's own
favourite, I think, is "The Chimney-Sweeper." The
" "
Holy Thursday was first reprinted by Malkin in his Father's
1

Memoirs of his Child, in 1806 " The Chimney Sweeper" by James

;

Montgomery in his Chimney Sweeper's Friend and Climbing-Boy's

Album of 1824. The Songs were first reprinted in full by Garth
Wilkinson in 1839. There are separate reprints of Songs of
Innocence dated 1899, 1902 (Flowers of Parnassus), 1903 (Broadway
Booklets), and 1906.
2
The poem is included in the present edition.

XV
 PREFACE
sweetness and joy of these songs as they affect the child-
nature, their reviving effect upon the careworn and tired
is not describable. To the "pure in heart" perhaps
they are most priceless. Innocence was Blake's secret.
He redeemed it for our grimy old world. And those
who have a warm corner in th'eir hearts for poetry
are beginning to recognise the fact. There are not
enough of these guileless carols partly, it is madden-
ing to think, owing to the goodiness of officious pietists.
Poems, note-books, drawings were annihilated on a
lavish scale after Blake's death in August, 1827. "The
fact is (says Gilchrist) that Swedenborgians, Irvingites,
or other extreme sectaries beset the custodian of these
priceless relics after Mrs. Blake's death in 1831 and
persuaded him to make a holocaust of them, as being
heretical and dangerous to those poor, dear unprotected
females Religion and Morals. The horrescent pietists
allowed that the works were inspired; but alas! the
inspiration had come from the devil. The words in-
scribed by Blake upon that very early engraving of his,
but with a wholly different intention, recur to our
"
memory Such were the Christians in all ages.'
'

But Blake himself wandered away in later years from the

u
production of these clear-cut gems from Piping down
the valleys wild" to "Tiger, tiger, burning bright,"
and winged his flight farther and farther into regions of
Apocalypse. He wrote his later books not for this

xvi
 PREFACE

world, but for the other. He lived to be an old

man, was very diligent, always producing, going right
ahead, through all sorts of highways and byways,
bogs and dens and caves, and finding it hard to get
thirty shillings for a drawing, living the external life of
a journeyman watchmaker, fully happy in his work as
a designer, and utterly indifferent to worldly ideas and
aims. He became an ancient sage, the teacher of the
sublime doctrine of Forgiveness, the greatest between
Rousseau and Tolstoi, but his thoughts became too
absolute, dogmatic and self-involved to be communicated,
like clouds which have rolled off the edge of the globe
to be lost in infinite space. The delight of children and
simple minds, a non-nonsensical Lear, an unmathematical
Carrol, an unselfconscious, non-allegorical Andersen,
Blake had left the pleasant land of symbol for the misty
region of Apocrypha. The blithest and most bird-like
song-music in existence is contained in these Songs of
1789. How can we ever fail to regret that this morning
air of glee was so soon to be lost in broken, troubled

images, monstrous shadows !

T.S.

xvii
SONGS OF INNOCENCE
r
PIPING DOWN THE VALLEYS WILD
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Introduction

down the valleys wild,

PIPING
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me :

" "
Pipe a song about a Lamb !

So I piped with merry cheer.

" "
Piper, pipe that song again ;

So I piped : he wept to hear.

"
Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe:
"
Sing thy songs of happy cheer !

So I sang the same again,

While he wept with joy to hear.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

"
Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read."
So he vanished from my sight ;

And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,

And I stained the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
 THE
SHEPHERD

The Shepherd

sweet is the shepherd's

HOW sweet lot !

From the morn to the evening he

strays ;

He shall follow his sheep all the day.

And his tongue shall be filled with
praise.

For he hears the lambs' innocent call,

And he hears the ewes' tender reply;
He is watchful while they are in
peace,
For they know when their shepherd
is nigh.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

The Echoing Green

sun does arise,

THE
And make happy the skies ;

The merry bells ring,

To welcome the Spring ;

The skylark and thrush,

The birds of the bush,

Sing louder around

To the bells' cheerful sound ;

While our sports shall be seen

On the echoing green.
 THE ECHOING
GREEN

Old John, with white hair,

Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk.
They laugh at our play
And soon they all say,
u
Such, such were the joys
When we all girls and boys
In our youth-time were seen
On the echoing green."
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Till the little ones,

weary,
No more can be merry :

The sun does descend,

And our sports have an end.
Round the laps of their mothers
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest,
And sport no more seen
On the darkening green.
READY FOR REST
The Lamb

lamb, who made thee?

LITTLEDost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bade thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead ;

Gave thee clothing of delight,

Softest clothing, woolly, bright ;

Gave thee such a tender voice,

Making all the vales rejoice ?

Little lamb, who made thee ?

Dost thou know who made thee ?

 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

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, and He is mild,
He became a little child,
I a child and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee !

Little lamb, God bless thee !

 THE LITTLE
BLACK BOY

The Little Black Boy

M
And I
'Y

am
mother bore
southern wild,
black, but oh,
me

my
in

soul
the

is

white,
White as an angel is the English
child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of
light.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

My mother taught me underneath a

tree,

And, sitting down before the heat of

day,
She took me on her lap and kissed
me,
And, pointing to the East, began to
say:

"
Look on the rising sun : there God
does live,
And gives his light, and gives his heat
away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and
men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noon-
day.
 THE LITTLE
BLACK BOY

u And we are put on earth a little

space,
That we may learn to bear the beams
of love ;

And these black bodies and this sun-

burnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady
grove.

" when our souls have learned

For,
the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear
his voice,

Saying,
*
Come out from the grove,

my love and care,

And round my golden tent like lambs
"
rejoice/

ii
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Thus did my mother say, and kissed

me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black, and he from
white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs
we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat till he

can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's
knee ;

And then I'll stand and stroke his

silver hair,

And be like him, and he will then

love me.
UNDER LEAVES so GREEN
 merry sparrow !

MERRY,
Under leaves so green
A happy blossom
Sees you, swift as arrow,
Seek your cradle narrow,
Near my bosom.

Pretty, pretty robin !

Under leaves so green

A happy blossom
Hears you sobbing, sobbing,
Pretty, pretty robin,
Near my bosom.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

The Chimney-Sweeper

mother died was

WHEN my
I

very young,
And my father sold me while yet my
tongue
Could scarcely cry, " Weep weep
! !

"
weep !
weep !

So your chimneys I
sweep, and in
soot I sleep.
 THE
CHIMNEY
SWEEPER

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried

when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was
shaved ;
so I said,
"
Hush, Tom ! never mind it, for,
when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot soil

your white hair."

And so he was quiet, and that very

night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such
a sight !

That thousands of sweepers, Dick,

Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins
of black.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

And by came an angel, who had a

bright key,
And he opened the coffins and 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 and 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, and
never want joy.

i6
 THE
CHIMNEY-
SWEEPER

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in

the dark,
And got with our bags and our
brushes to work.

^Though
the morning was cold, Tom
was happy and warm :

So if all do their duty, they need not

fear harm.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

The Little Boy Lost

ATHER, father, where are you

going?
Oh, 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, and the child

did weep,
And away the vapour flew.
FATHER, FATHER, WHERE ARE YOU GOING ?
 THE LITTLE
BOY FOUND

The Little Boy Found

little boy lost in the lonely

THE fen,
Led by the wandering light,
Began to cry, but God, ever nigh,
Appeared like his father, in white.

He kissed the child, and by the hand

led,
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow, pale, through the
lonely dale,
The little boy weeping sought.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

A Cradle Song

dreams, form a shade

SWEET
O'er my lovely infant's head !

Sweet dreams of pleasant streams

By happy, silent, moony beams !

Sweet Sleep, with soft down i

Weave thy brows an infant crown !

Sweet Sleep, angel mild,

Hover o'er my happy child !

Sweet smiles, in the night

Hover over my delight !

Sweet smiles, mother's smile

All the livelong night beguile.
 A CRADLE
SONG

Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,

Chase not slumber from thine eyes !

Sweet moan, sweeter smile,

All the dovelike moans beguile.

Sleep, sleep, happy child !

All creation slept and smiled.

Sleep, sleep, happy sleep,
While o'er thee doth mother weep.

Sweet babe, in thy face

Holy image I can trace ;

Sweet babe, once like thee

Thy Maker lay, and wept for me :

21
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Wept for me, for thee, for all,

When He was an infant small.
Thou His image ever see,

Heavenly face that smiles on thee !

Smiles on thee, on me, on all,

Who became an infant small ;

Infant smiles are his own smiles :

Heaven and earth to peace beguiles.

 THE
DIVINE IMAGE

The Divine Image

Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,

TO 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, human face

a ;

And Love, the human form divine ;

And Peace, the human dress.

 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

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, and Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.
 HOLY
THURSDAY

Holy Thursday

npWAS on a Holy Thursday, their

X innocent faces clean,
Came children walking two and two,
in red, and and green
blue, :

Grey-headed beadles walked before,

with wands as white as snow,
Till into thehigh dome of Paul's they
like Thames waters flow.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Oh what a multitude they seemed,

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 and 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 the aged men, wise

sit

guardians of the poor.

Then cherish pity, lest you drive an
angel from your door.

26
 NIGHT

sun descending in the west,

THE
The evening star does shine ;

The birds are silent in their nest,

And I must seek for mine.
The moon like a flower
In heaven's high bower,
With silent delight,

Sits and smiles on the night.

 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Farewell, green fields and

grove,
Where flocks have ta'en delight.
Where lambs have nibbled, silent
move
The feet of angels bright ;

Unseen, they pour blessing,

And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.
FAREWELL, GREEN FIELDS !
lr
 NIGHT

They look in every thoughtless nest

Where birds are covered warm ;

They visit caves of every beast,

To keep them all from harm :
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping,
They pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by their bed.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

When wolves and tigers howl for

They pitying stand and weep,

Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep.

But, if they rush dreadful,

The most heedful,
angels,
Receive each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.
And there the lion's ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold :

And pitying the tender cries

And walking round the fold :

"
Saying: Wrath by His meek
ness,
And, by His health, sickness,
Are driven away
From our immortal day.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

u And
now beside thee, bleating lamb,
I lie down and sleep,
can
Or think on Him who bore thy name,
Graze after thee, and weep.
For, washed in life's river,

My bright mane for ever

Shall shine like the gold,
As I guard o'er the fold."
SPRING
 OUND the flute!
Now 'tis mute ;

Birds delight,
Day and night,
Nightingale,
In the dale,
Lark in sky

Merrily,
Merrily, merrily to welcome in the

year.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Little boy,
Full of joy ;

Little girl,

Sweet and small,

Cock does crow,
So do you ;

Merry voice,
Infant noise ;

Merrily, merrily to welcome in the

year.
 Little lamb,
Here am I ;'

Come and lick

My white neck ;

Let me pull
Your soft wool ;

Let me kiss

Your soft face ;

Merrily, merrily we welcome in the

year.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Nurse's Song

the voices of children

WHEN are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything 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
1
'
skies.
NURSE'S SONG
-
"
No, no, let us play, for it is
ye
And we cannot go to sleep ;

Besides, in the sky the little

fly,
And the hills are all covered
sheep."
"
Well, well, go and play till the
fades away,
And then go home to bed."
The little ones leaped, and shouted
and laughed,
And all the hills echoed.
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

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 JOY
A Dream
a dream did weave a shade
ONCE
O'er my angel-guarded bed,
That an emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I
lay.

Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,

Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangled spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say

" do they
Oh, my children !
cry,
Dothey hear their father sigh ?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me."

39
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Pitying, I dropped a tear,

But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied,
" What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night ?

" I am set to light the ground,

While the beetle goes his round :

Follow now the beetle's hum ;

"
Little wanderer, hie thee home '
LAUGHING SONG
 LAUGHING
SONG

Laughing Song

the green woods laugh

WHEN with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laugh-
ing by ;

When the air does laugh with our

merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the
noise of it j
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

When the meadows laugh with lively

green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the

merry scene ;

When Mary, and Susan, and Emily

With their sweet round mouths sing,
" "
Ha, ha, he !

When the painted birds laugh in the

shade,
Where our table with cherries and
nuts is spread :

Come live, and be merry, and join

with me,
To u
sing the sweet chorus of Ha,
ha, he!"
THE SCHOOL-BOY
 THE
SCHOOL-BOY

The School-Boy

to rise on a summer morn

1LOVE
When the birds sing on every

tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me ;

O ! what sweet company !

But to go to school in a summer

morn,
Oh it drives all joy away ;

Under a cruel eye outworn,

The little ones spend the day

In sighing and dismay.

 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

Ah ! then at times I
drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour ;

Nor in my book can I take delight

Nor sit in learning's
bower,
Worn through with the dreary
shower.

How can the bird, that is born for

joy,
cage and sing ?
Sit in a

How can a child, when fears annoy,

But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?
 THE
SCHOOL-BOY

O father and mother, if buds are

nipp'd,
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are stripp'd
Of their joy in the springing day,

By sorrow and care's dismay

How shall the Summer arise in joy,

Or the summer fruits appear ?
Or how shall we gather what griefs
destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of Winter appear ?
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

On Another's Sorrow

I see another's woe,

CAN And not be in sorrow too ?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief ?

Can I see a falling tear,

And not feel my sorrow's share ?
Can a father see his child

Weep, nor be with sorrow filled ?

Can a mother sitand hear

An infant groan, an infant fear ?
No, no ! never can it be !

Never, never can it be !

ON ANOTHER'S SORROW
 ON ANOTHER'S
SORROW

And can He who smiles on all

Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird's grief and care
Hear the woes that infants bear

And not sit beside the nest,

Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near,

Weeping tear on infant's tear ?

And not sit both night and day,

Wiping allour tears away ?
Oh no ! never can it be !

Never, never can it be !

47
 SONGS OF
INNOCENCE

He doth give His joy to all :

He becomes an infant small,

He becomes a man of woe,
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,

And thy Maker is not by :

Think not thou canst weep a tear,

And thy Maker is not near.

Oh He gives to us His joy,

That our grief He may destroy :

Till our grief is fled and gone

He doth sit by us and moan.

 THE VOICE
OF THE
ANCIENT
BARD

The Voice of the Ancient Bard

of delight ! come hither

YOUTH
And see the opening morn,
Image of Truth new-born.
Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,
Dark disputes and artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze ;

Tangled roots perplex her ways ;

How many have fallen there !

They stumble all night over bones of

the dead ;

And feel they know not what but

care;
And wish to lead others, when they
should be led.

49
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