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William Blake died on August 12, 1827. He was buried in unmarked grave at the public cemetery of Bunhill Fields. .
As it is stated in his biography, William Blake was not just a poet, but also a painter, engraver, and visionary mystic. His hand-illustrated series of lyrical and epic poems, beginning with Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience , form one of the most strikingly original and independent bodies of work in the Western cultural tradition. .
The subtitle of Songs of Innocence and Experience is "Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul-. The word "contrary- had a very specific and important meaning for Blake. Like almost all great poets, he was an enemy of dualism. Dualism is the tendency consequent upon it in Western culture to make absolute judgements between the contraries, accepting, praising, and empowering one, rejecting, suppressing, and attempting to exterminate the other. Poetry itself is a non-dualistic, holistic, it is invariably metaphorical, where the poet is the connection-man. The language and vision of poetry insists that the contraries are equally important and inseparable. Therefore, by describing at the outset innocence and experience as "contrary states of the human soul-, Blake is warning us that we are not being invited to choose between them. He points out that no such choice is possible or desirable, and that we are not going to be offered the truism that innocent joy is preferable to "the sorrows of experience-. .
Songs of Innocence - The Lamb.
Songs of Innocence was the first of Blake's illuminated books published in 1789. The poems and artwork were reproduced by copperplate engraving and colored with washes by hand . .
Songs of Innocence consists of 23 poems, among which most are lacking contraries, energy, progression and complexity. They represent the state of infancy in their simplicity and vulnerability. .
"The Lamb- is a very well structured poem.
