The parents viewed the baby as "a fiend hid in the cloud" (Line 4), which shows the ingratitude of the parents towards the life of the newborn. Not only do the two poems have different perspectives and diction, they are also constructed differently. Although both poems have two stanzas, the rhyme schemes are different. In "Infant Joy", Blake uses a rhyme scheme of ABCDAC for the first stanza and ABCDDC for the second. On the other hand, Blake uses a regular AABB rhyme throughout the whole poem in "Infant Sorrow". What is more, on Blake's original plate for "Infant Joy", there are two flowers; the smaller one is closed and wilted, while the larger one is blooming, with a baby, a mother or a nurse, and an angel watching over them. The blooming flower symbolizes the blissfulness of childbirth whereas the closed flower symbolizes the negative aspect of childbirth such as the one illustrated in "Infant Sorrow". Similar to the poem, there is only one parent in the illustrations of "Infant Joy", which is believed to be the mother or the nurse. The father is not present in the visuals, which suggests the fact that children are much closer to their mothers than of their fathers. The angel in the illustrations symbolizes blessings from heaven and protection from God. On the contrary, the illustrations in Blake's original plate for "Infant Sorrow" are contrastingly in a dark room. Again, the newborn is accompanied with his or her mother or nurse; however, the parent has not yet gotten to the baby who is crying for help. This represents the parent's inability to take care of her child and to always be there for him. Blake broke the traditional conceptions of society by comparing the two disparate aspects of childbirth. There are some events in life that are usually perceived as the happiest moments in life, such as weddings and births.
