William Blake
Songs of Innocence and Experience
Set out below are some key areas for comparison between some of Blake’s poems. The suggestions that follow would work
equally well in grid form.
Comparison between ‘The Ecchoing Green’ and ‘London’
Title
The Ecchoing Green
London
Themes and Ideas
Innocence and experience
Carefree and fearful
Freedom and oppression
Light and dark
Form and Structure
Rhyme scheme and rhythm
Movement of ideas
viewpoint
Language and Techniques
Use of symbols and metaphors
Verbs and adjectives
Images and emotions
Use of repetition
Sound patterning
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William Blake
Songs of Innocence and Experience
Comparing the ‘Introduction’s to Innocence and Experience
Themes and ideas
The Piper
The Ancient Bard
The differences between
‘piper’, ‘bard’ and ‘poet’
The ideas about creative
imagination and the ‘sleep of
reason’
Form and structure
Types of sentence
Rhyme scheme and rhythms
Structure and internal
structure
Language
Emotions and atmosphere
Sensual words and phrases
Symbolism
Techniques
Use of repetition
Use of dialogue – or monologue
Comparing ‘Nurse’s Song’ from Innocence and Experience
‘Nurse’s Song’
Innocence
Experience
Ideas about the past
Ideas about night coming
Children and nature
Guardianship and protection
Form and structure
Viewpoint and images
Comparing ‘The Divine Image’ and ‘The Human Abstract’
‘The Divine Image’
‘The Human Abstract’
The idea of Mercy
The idea of Pity
The idea of Peace
The idea of Love
How is reason (intellect)
seen in each poem?
Use of religion in each
poem
Form and structure
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6205.doc
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William Blake
Songs of Innocence and Experience
Characters and their functions in Songs of Innocence and Experience
Character
Poems
Function
Piper
Bard
Nurse
Parents
Priests
Angels
Children
Animals
What are the functions of those who do not actually appear as ‘characters’, e.g. the mill
owners, the employers, the soldiers, the Heads of State, the aristocracy, Parliament etc?
Those who own land or who have power? How are they referred to in the poems? How
do we know Blake’s views of them?
Write the words beneath on a blank page and surround them with quotations to show
their presence, by inference, in the ‘Songs’.
Mill owner
Mill buildings
King George III
Prime Minister Pitt
Duke of Marlborough
Archbishop of Canterbury
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6205.doc
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