Page:Facsimile of the original outlines before colouring of The songs of innocence and of experience executed by William Blake.djvu/13

 interpretation it was written then, and is re-written now, with some regret. No one willingly or cheerfully proposes to a reader and lover of Blake to turn away from the pleasure of the poetry and harass his mind by studying a prose explanation of the meaning. Yet such annoyance as is felt in the study of the vast net-work of myth and symbol to which every phrase is more or less related, turns to greater pleasure in the end. Presently the irritation of searching and comparing passes and is forgotten, while the effect remains. Then, instead of finding that the poetry of the poems has been frightened away by the symbolism, the reader perceives it to sing with a triple music; for now to the melody of the words and of the images is added a newer, sweeter, deeper cadence of magic potency.

Innocence and Experience are contrasted with one another because Blake's religious feelings forbade him to contrast Innocence and Guilt. To do so was to take up the method of Satan—the Accuser. There is no sin like the sin of accusation, because there is nothing so truly characteristic of the great Enemy. This, Blake firmly believed. In practice he was sometimes hurried into forgetting his creed. But in literature at least he attempted from the very first to remain faithful to it. Even apart from the idea of guilt, Experience—the knowledge of Good and Evil—is already so great a contrast to Innocence that Paradise cannot contain it. In taking this title Blake gives the sign that his true career has begun. He is no longer, as in the Poetical Sketches, producing mere literature, however fresh, beautiful, and powerful. He is, from henceforward, not a poet among the poets—one singer more, where many were found before him. He begins to take his separate place as, above all things, the Teacher.

There is no necessary opposition between teaching and poetry as there is between innocence and experience. It happens, by evil fortune, that our Western teachers, even when they possess poetic power, lose it as a general rule when they begin to teach. The lesson enters, like Poverty at the door, and the poetry flies away like Love out of the window. But there is nothing of an abiding law, a fulfilment of the inherent nature of things, in this usual result of trying to convey doctrine with verse. It is a very strange and dreadful misfortune, and never loses its strangeness and repulsiveness, however often it may be repeated. It is also a puzzle that never ceases its bewilderment. Why should a man descend to prose the moment he begins to teach? There seems no reason for it. The natural expectation would be all the other way, did not common experience check our hopes while yet half formed. We should, if we had never read an improving verse, naturally expect a finer and more full-breathed melody from a singer who poured out his beloved and believed convictions on all great themes in the red-hot fury of proselytizing zeal.