Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/270

 254 CRITICAL STUDIES "What shall I call thee? ' I happy am, Joy is my name.' Sweet joy befall thee. Pretty joy ! Sweet joy but two days old, Sweet joy I call thee : Thou dost smile, I sing the while, Sweet joy befall thee." Five years later come the " Songs of Experience," and the singer is an older child, and even a youth, but not yet a man. The experience is that of a sensitive and thoughtful boy, troubled by the first perceptions of evil where he has believed all good, thinking the whole world cruel and false since some playmate-friend has turned unkind, seeing life all desolate and blank since some coveted object has disappointed in the possession ; in short, through very lack of experience, generalising one untoward event into a theory of life that seems more bitterly hopeless than grey-haired cynical pessimism. Even the "Garden of Love," "The Human Abstract," "The Two Songs," "To Tirzah," and "Christian Forbearance" (one of the keenest arrows of Beel- zebub shot straight back with wounding scorn at the evil-archer), are not in thought and experience beyond the capacity of meditative boyhood. " The Tiger " is a magnificent expression of boyish wonder and admiring terror ; " The Crystal Cabinet " is a fairy dream of early youth; "The Golden Net" is a fine dream of adolescence. Perhaps in only three more of his briefer poems do we find Blake mature