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Articles: 1. Paradise Lost, 2. The Prelude, 3. To a Mouse, 4. Fall of Man, 5. Songs of Innocence and Experience

 Notes about Songs of Innocence and Experience: 

Needs section or more on how Blake illustrated poems

Musical settings section is too long, expecially compared with the sections Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

Not enough information on the content of the poems

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is an illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. The poems are interdependent, and thus, in order to fully comprehend the significance of the poems, they should be viewed in relation to one another. Furthermore, the poems are intended to challenge our traditional ways of reading as they progress, and in doing so invite us to see the world differently.

Illuminations
Blake originally printed his Songs using copper plates. After writing and drawing on the plates using a varnish, he would place an acid over them which ate away at the copper, but not at the varnish, and after taking off this varnish the places that he had written on were raised above the rest of the area on the plates. To print, he would cover these raised portions with ink and press the paper on top. He then made the printed papers into booklets. The illustrations on these plates are not merely for decoration, but rather they further complicate and add to the text of the poems. Thus, the poems should be read alongside the images in order to gather their meaning more fully.