Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Piping down the valleys wild,     Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child,     And he laughing said to me:

‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’     So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again.’     So I piped: he wept to hear.

‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;     Sing thy songs of happy cheer!’ So I sung the same again,     While he wept with joy to hear.

‘Piper, sit thee down and write     In a book, that all may read.’ So he vanished from my sight;     And I plucked a hollow reed,

And I made a rural pen,     And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs     Every child may joy to hear.

Illustration:

My mother bore me in the southern wild,     And I am black, but O my soul is white! White as an angel is the English child,     But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,     And, sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissèd me,     And, pointing to the East, began to say:

‘Look on the rising sun: there God does live,     And gives His light, and gives His heat away, And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive     Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

‘And we are put on earth a little space,     That we may learn to bear the beams of love; And these black bodies and this sunburnt face     Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

‘For, when our souls have learned the heat to bear,     The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice, Saying, “Come out from the grove, my love and care,     And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.”’

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me,     And thus I say to little English boy. When I from black, and he from white cloud free,     And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear     To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee; And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,     And be like him, and he will then love me.

When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry ‘Weep! weep! weep! weep!’ So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved; so I said, ‘Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head’s bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.’

And so he was quiet, and that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!— That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

And by came an angel, who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins, and set them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind: And the angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy, He’d have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags and our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm: So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

‘Lost in desert wild Is your little child. How can Lyca sleep If her mother weep?

‘If her heart does ache, Then let Lyca wake; If my mother sleep, Lyca shall not weep.

‘Frowning, frowning night, O’er this desert bright Let thy moon arise, While I close my eyes.’

Sleeping Lyca lay, While the beasts of prey, Come from caverns deep, Viewed the maid asleep.

The kingly lion stood, And the virgin viewed: Then he gambolled round O’er the hallowed ground.

Leopards, tigers, play Round her as she lay; While the lion old Bowed his mane of gold,

And her bosom lick, And upon her neck, From his eyes of flame, Ruby tears there came;

While the lioness Loosed her slender dress, And naked they conveyed To caves the sleeping maid.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And, when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Illustration: