William Blake
             "Man, born free, is everywhere in chains." (Pg. 328) This was the basis for William Blake's poetry. Blake may have written dreams of sunny days, angels, "wise guardians," "songs of pleasant glee," little ones leaping, shouting, and laughing, but to Blake these were all "Songs of Innocence." To Blake, one had not experienced enough to "know" that life was dreadful, dreary, cruel, and merciless. The reason behind writing "Songs of Innocence," then "Songs of Experience," was to illustrate that when one is naive, they may think that life is greater than it really seems to be.
             Blake is intelligent for being able to articulate two versions of the same poem and, while only changing it slightly, change the whole meaning of the poem altogether. Starting with "Introduction," in "Songs of Innocence," William Blake had written of a small child asking to play a song that is cheerful, then sing happily and finish by writing it all in a book so that all who will read it may enjoy the happy songs. While this song may be a joyous melodious poem that is not the real case in the wishes of Blake. Readers will find this out in the second book "Songs of Experience," in which a second form of "Introduction" is exhibited. This second poem sounds much like the first except that it has a depressing tone that the first did not. Instead of "Piping a song about a lamb," the line is replaced with "Calling the lapsed Soul And weeping in the evening dew." So clearly the second poem is written by Blake to show that life is not the happy place that it may seem.
             Blake wrote many poems with two versions to them such as "The Chimney Sweeper." The first version was one that had a fictitious tone and real tone. The fictitious tone was idea of the children doing such a cancer-inducing and filthy job. While one child cries because of the bad situation, the speaking child says to him that he mustn't think of the bad because he has dreams of...