Songs of Innocence OR Songs of Experience?

William Blake wrote a series of poems, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" in the late 1700's. On a quick read through, many of the poems convey overly happy tones for life and the world, if you will. However, when one slows down and truly reads into Blake's poetry, one sees quite the opposite of happiness. Instead of sheer innocence you can see he actually is meaning for it to be almost sarcastic, or seen as the opposite; a binary (good/bad, innocence/experience, etc).

In his poem, “The Echoing Green,” Blake uses beautiful imagery:

“The sun does arise,
And make happy the skies;
The merry bells ring
To welcome the spring;”

One cannot help but picture a warm, sunny spring day. Blake continues on to tell how the elderly are laughing as the innocent children playing happily. They also reminisce of the innocent playing they did on beautiful day when they were young:

"Such, such were the joys
When we all, girls and boys,
In our youth time were seen
On the Echoing Green."

But the adults and elderly are not laughing because of the joyful memories they have. They are laughing because they know the hardship and struggle the children will one day face. The hardship that will end the happiness the children once found so easily.

“Till the little ones, weary,
No more can be merry;
The sun does descend,
And our sports have an end.”

Blake uses the happiness of spring and the innocence of children to draw the readers to the opposite thought. Thoughts of how happiness ends and the harshness of reality the children will one day face. The reader must also keep in mind this poem was written after the Industrial Revolution. The urban-carefree lifestyle was becoming unheard of. The “Green” was becoming unheard of; Leading to only its “Echo” left behind.