... ;Sick Rose". William Blake could be characterized as an antinomian. He was a person who based his own religion and morality based on personal experiences with God, or a higher power (Notes, 6/27). His individualistic approach to life can be seen in his modernizing work Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. One of the more difficult works of Blake to assess ... to a "trembling cry" (line 5, pg 24). The last stanza is also prescriptive of society, meaning that this is the way society should be, not the way it is (Notes, 6/27). Society is full of hunger, suffering, and poverty. Both H...

• Word Count: 1237
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... is surrounding the speaker. However, in the next stanza the speaker says, "and by came an angel, who had a bright key,/ And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;" The angel can be considered to be a representation of the color white, showing purity and innocence. This shows the narrator's point of view as innocent and pure because he believes ... that an angel will come and set the children free of the horrible life they have lived as chimney sweepers, living in the soot from the chimneys. In the Songs of Innocence poem the narrator has hope for the future ... heaven, where the...

• Word Count: 654
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

... his "Songs of Innocence and Experience" which express two opposites, happiness or misery, heaven or hell. "Innocence" expresses the state of childhood, into which we are all born, a state of free imagination and infinite joy. "Experience", is a state when disaster has destroyed initial happiness. He believes that problems concerning child labor, religious institutions, individual apathy, prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases, war and ... heath and smiled among the winter's snow"(5-6), which suggests that he was then put into a woeful life for a child's happiness is not allowed. Th...

• Word Count: 1046
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... much of his life, sweeping chimneys and living in filth. He and his friends couldn't take it anymore, then an angel showed up and freed them from it. They were free and living in cleanliness. It was such a feeling for them, one they had never experienced before. The Songs from Experience starts out with Earth's Answer. This is a sorrowful poem, full ... of a young child that is happy, but those that were watching over him did not want this, they clothed him in clothes of death and taught him to sing the notes of woe. They did not want him to be happy. The second of the three is a mocker...

• Word Count: 1008
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School