There is an undeniable link between William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience and the main belief structure of the Romantics of his time. Despite the extremist nature of Blake that is ever present in his works, both literary and artistic, his core beliefs stem from the average romantic views infiltrated in society. He most certainly had more than a fair share of peculiar tangents within his principles, but from a further practical standpoint, he was relatively grounded. While some may argue, Blake can even be fairly accurately compared to William Wordsworth - as bizarre of a match as it may seem. Both had strong views regarding childhood, innocence, and the necessity to progress through life past the naivety of adolescence. .
Aside from simple comparisons though, Blake was his own person in a multitude of other ways. He established his own extensively detailed mythology designed to explain the origins of "modern society- as he knew it and physically engraved a mass amount of his poems, with illustrations, for presentation. He was unique in his plethora of additional efforts placed into his work to make it that much more coherent and ultimately inimitable. The common person must take more than a passing glance at Blake to truly appreciate the vast array of ideals for which he stood.
When Blake composed Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, he reached a milestone in his career. It was through this work that his core feelings about Romantically controversial issues came to a head. Hidden behind a web of confusion - to the general public - spun by works such as The Book of Urizen and The Four Zoas, were the Songs. Their main goal was to portray the dialectical relationship between the world of childhood naivety and adult knowledge. According to Blake, both extremes were necessary to achieve a Higher Innocence' (Beulah) - the final goal. His view of the worst type of individual was one who remained stagnant in the world of the innocent.
This poem portrays a loss of innocence in a manner that only Blake could establish. ... Blake's first example of this is his use of the "rose" in the poem. Blake uses the rose as a metaphor for a young, pure and likely a virgin woman. ... William Blake was a romanticist and naturally his beliefs reflected his style of writing. ... Blake uses the innocent girl or "rose" to show the existence of good within the poem. ...
