Comparing: "The Little Girl Lost" and "A Little BOY Lost".
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, by William Blake.
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William Blake (1757-1827) was born in London and spent most of his life in Britain's capital. He was an artist and besides writing poems, he made his own illustrations to go with them. He had strong feelings about organized religion, he was strongly against it. His ideas were, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, highly influenced by the French Revolution. .
The first book of poems Blake published, was his Poetical Sketches in 1783. After that he wrote "Songs of Innocence" (1789) at the beginning of the Romantic period (1789 -1832), Songs of Experience was written 5 years later. The years during and just after the French revolution were called the age of Enlightenment. Art became more important, also the way people thought began to change. It became important to enlighten oneself with poetry and art. Blake's idea about religion was that everyone should be free to believe as he or she wants to, not as how the "organised Religion" tells us to do. With organized religion he meant the Anglican Church. "The Little Girl Lost" is written down in "Songs of Innocence and as so, will be discussed first.
The poem "The Little Girl Lost" starts with the sentences:.
In futurity.
I prophetic see.
That the earth from sleep.
(Grave the sentence deep).
(lines 1-4).
This sounds as if the poet is reading us his work. He does this in the first four verses. The line: "(Grave sentence deep)" (line 4), tells us how the first stanza is to be read. In the second verse he, (the poet) tells us about how the world will become a garden mild. We know that William Blake was a religious man, and I can't help thinking that he is talking about the "Garden of Eden". In the fourth verse, the first line states; "Seven summers old" (line 13). The earth was created in six and he (God) rested on the seventh. I do think that in this poem it is of more importance to the girl, for she is seven summers old.