Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love in Songs of Innocence and Experience Anonymous 12th Grade

William Blake, as a libertarian and political writer concerned with Romantic values concerning the freedom of the human spirit and liberty, wrote his ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ in an attempt to attack the corrupt political systems and institutions around at the time he was writing during the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment; in his songs, Blake proposes rebellion against such systems, alongside setting up his ideal of a Utopia within his ‘Songs of Innocence’, with the virtues of ‘mercy, pity, peace and love’ found in ‘The Divine Image’ aptly summarizing the image of Blake’s Utopia, with such virtues being clearly nowhere to be found in the corrupt society which Blake describes in his ‘Songs of Experience’ in such poems as ‘London’ and ‘Holy Thursday’.

One subject of Blake’s social and political protest within his ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ is that of the church, as although he himself was a Christian, he can be seen to attack the twisted version of religion which holds destructive ideologies that exploit and damage the vulnerable, ignoring the traditional values of charity and mercy and instead allowing racism and the suffering of children, as see in ‘The Little Black Boy’ and ‘Holy Thursday’...