William Blake Tone

William Blake, the author of the two exceptional poems, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience,” does an excellent job of creating two very similar, yet divergent pieces of literature. The two poems, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience,” both use literary devices to, consequently, produce a light and dark tone throughout the pieces.

First of all, both of the written works commence with a mournful tone that is very comprehensive to the reader at hand. The “Songs of Experience” and “Songs of Innocence” both steadily persist with a grim tone throughout their stanzas by using specific words such as “crying,” “black,” and “death;” all of which bring a negative connotation into the reader's mind. However, “Songs of Innocence” has a drastic tone shift midway through the poem. Conversely, the other poem doesn't really every swap tones. William Blake also uses diction in both of the poems to assist in the creation of the grim tone at hand. Moreover, a clear example of diction used to create a cheerless mood can be seen in line eight of “Songs of Experience” where it states, “(the parents) ...taught me to sing the notes of woe,” in which clearly conjures up a gloomy tone into the tale of young chimney sweeps.

After all the gloomy stanzas in the beginning of “Songs of Innocence,” the tone takes a shift roughly around line eight when the first person character in the poem begins praising Tom for his white hair, thus eventually bringing a smirk back to Tom’s face. The poem then proceeds to use a whole miscellany of words that create a hopeful tone such as: “happy,” “white,” “heaven,” “joy,” and “warm.” Even though “Songs of Experience” has a scarce amount of optimistic tone words, they all are used for a negative scheme that persists through every