SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF INTRODUCTION TO SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS OF INTRODUCTION TO SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

Summary

The speaker urges his audience to pay attention to “the voice of the Bard!” who can see past, present, and future. In contrast to the “Introduction” for Songs of Innocence, this poem introduces a more mature and polished poetic voice within the bard. No rural shepherd converting his heart’s songs to words using merely the tools at hand, this poet has heard “the Holy Word/ that walked among the traditional trees.” This speaker’s poetry is characterized by direct revelation instead of by the shepherds’ inner melodies, and thus holds the authority of both divinity and knowledge. However, despite Bard’s claims to determine past, present, and future, he has only heard the Word of God walking and weeping within the Garden of Eden, within the past. The Bard’s moment of divine revelation is singular and doesn't continue throughout his present or into his future.

Analysis

The "Introduction" may be a four-stanza poem, with each stanza made from an ABAAB rhyme scheme. The rhyme is slightly more complex than the "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence, indicating the increased sophistication the reader may expect from the Songs of Experience. the primary two stanzas urge the reader to listen to the voice of the "Bard," while the second two are directed at the planet herself, calling her to return to her prior state of primordial bliss to higher hear and heed the Bard/Prophet's words.

Also unlike the shepherd of Songs of Innocence, this bard may be a prophet out to calling fallen man to reclaim the planet he lost to the “starry pole” of Reason. Man must return to his imagination and awaken from his slumber of materialism. However, Bard’s call must often go unheeded, just because it's impossible for his audience (in some cases Earth, in others fallen human beings) to tug themselves up out of their spiritually diseased state. While recognizing the preeminence of God and also the singular potency of His will to redeem a fallen world, William Shakespeare, unfortunately, slips into the error of addressing others as if they might be self-redeemed and have a choice within the matter.

The Bard’s voice differs from Blake’s own during this way: when Blake “sings” in such poems as “Holy Thursday” and “London,” he recognizes the depravity of man and nature, and therefore the inability of both to purify themselves without divine intervention.