" The Divine Image" from Innocence and Experience is a good example of Blake showing opposite views of life. The Songs of Innocence one talks about love, peace, pity and mercy being life's virtues but the Songs of Experience version expresses the opposite and tells of cruelty, jealousy, terror and secrecy as human virtues. In line 17 through 20 Blake says, "And all must love the human form,/In heathen, turk, or jew;/Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell/There God is dwelling too." It is an idealistic view that all people share these good virtues as well as they believe in God since Blake was heavily influenced by Christianity. In Songs of Experience, lines 1 to 4 say "Cruelty has a Human Heart,/And Jealousy a Human Face;/Terror the Human Form Divine,/And Secrecy the Human Dress." Blake expresses that people are made up of theses bad or evil virtues and it is the reality of the world.
William Blake's two versions of "Holy Thursday" display two very different moods. The Songs of Innocence version has a hopeful view for orphans left at charitable institutions while the Experience version has a darker mood to it. Lines 8 to 10 of the Innocence version states "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." Blake writes of the orphan children united and together singing a powerful song as an uplifting and positive image. It is another idealistic view. The Experience version shows the harsher reality for orphans. On lines 8 to 12, Blake describes the orphan's lives as "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." Blake is saying that their lives are cold, empty and void of any light. Instead of singing a hopeful song, Blake compares their singing to a trembling cry. The two versions depict two opposing moods due to the children experiencing hardships over time instead of remaining innocent forever.
The two versions of "The Chimney Sweeper" show opposing views of hopefulness and misery as well for the same reason. The Songs of Innocence version showed that despite hopelessness of the situation, Tom could still feel a sense of happiness and hope due to his innocence or naivety. This shows in lines 23 and 24, "Tho the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm,/So if all do their duty they need not fear harm." Tom's dream of heaven gave him something to hold onto and look forward to even in a helpless situation. The Songs of Experience version has a more cynical mood because the child in this poem realizes the hopelessness of his situation and how he is being used. In lines 7 to 8, Blake says "They clothed me in the clothes of death,/And taught me to sing the notes of woe." This child remembers the experience of his parents making him a chimney sweeper unlike the child in the first version who was sold young enough that he barely could remember. The child in the first version was much more innocent. The child in the Experience version understood that his parents used him and has lost his innocence from this.
When I think of innocence versus experience, I know that the more experiences you go through in life, the less innocent you become. The most innocent time in a person's life is when they are a baby and from there they start to lose their innocence. I think nowadays children are growing up faster and losing their innocence quicker than in the past due to the things things they see in school and on TV. Experience tends to change what we want or how we feel about certain things in our lives. It tends to give you more realistic expectations about live instead of just expecting what you dreamed for is going to come true. Life has its share of good and bad experiences. The more life experience you acquire, the more you realize that life isn't just black or white and that life is ever changing.
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