For my first journal, I’ve chosen to analyze the similar and contrasting elements in William Blake’s collection of poems. Blake believed the human soul to have two parts: one innocent, or naïve, and one experiential, or realistic (118, Blake pdf). The innocent side would see the ideal world, while the experiential side would see it for what it is. To illustrate this, he wrote two collections: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Contained within each collection were several small poems, including “Infant Joy”, “Infant Sorrow”, two versions of “Chimney Sweeper”, two versions of “Holy Thursday”, and “London”. Each story has a counterpart, and each story takes on either the light or dark aspect that Blake believed in and tried to depict through his artful poems. However, they are not totally black and white, as Blake still makes mentions of the harsh realities of 18th century London in the Songs of Innocence poems. In this way, the poems act as counterparts to one another as parts of a whole. Some of the themes Blake touched upon were poverty, sadness, child labor, death, and overall social injustice, which was prevalent at the time and he felt compelled to address. Songs of Experience paints a bleak, dark picture of the times in which he lived. “London” gave me a sense of the grim state London was in at the time Blake authored the poem, with his mentions of sickness, death, and grueling labor such as in Chimney Sweeper. 
 
One aspect of Blake’s work that spoke to me is his use of illustrations to highlight the overall mood of each story. In “Infant Joy”, there is no obvious dark message or tone in the stanzas, rather it is just happy, hopeful, and pure. Blake repeatedly uses “joy” throughout the poem, first to name the baby, then to describe the newborn’s emotional state and that the newborn wishes that same sweet joy upon others. The illustrations on his original illuminated copy depict a beautiful scene of a mother holding her child inside a bright red flower that has blossomed. There is an angel in a yellow dress overlooking the mother and child, and the scene just perfectly complements the positive mood of the poem. “Infant Sorrow”, on the other hand, directly foils the peacefulness of “Infant Joy”. As its title suggests, the infant in the poem is grieving and helpless, and born into a “dangerous world” where all it can really do is try to survive. The print illustration enhanced the dark mood for me. The dark curtains in the room, the struggling, wreathing baby, and the red-faced, stressed mother just set a tone of a mother and child who do not have the bond they should have. Whereas an angel and flower were protecting the baby and keeping he or she pure in “Infant Joy”, there is no angel or flower in the illustration for “Infant Sorrow”. I see a mother that is annoyed by the crying and trying to silence rather than comfort her baby. Blake’s choice to have an image accompany the words was a smart one, as it communicates the tone subtly and not in an overbearing way. There is a similar dichotomy in the illustrations of his other works from this collection, with colorful, upbeat scenery in Songs of Innocence and dark tones in Songs of Experience, all of which enhance the meaning of each poem for me. 

