Songs of Innocence and Experience are a series of poems on how we see the world at different stages of our lives. They are, as Blake says himself, "Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". Both collections sometimes share the same name for poems, such as The Chimney Sweep, but one glance at these two poems reveals the contrast between the unknowing small boy from Songs of Innocence and the more worldly wise soul in Songs of Experience. The word Songs invokes images of musicality, from the pastoral shepherd's pipe of the Introduction of the Songs of Innocence to the bardic harp of The Voice of the Ancient Bard, concluding Songs of Experience. Each collection shows comparative images of children, babies, religion and the general world in which we live, and how we see things differently when we are first in a state of innocence and when we reach maturity.

Additional resources:

Wikipedia: Songs of Innocence and Experience
Wikipedia: William Blake
Sparknotes.com: Songs of Innocence and Experience

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