To be "optimistic" is to "believe that good things will happen in the future". Most readers would balk at the poems within Songs of Innocence and Experience is described thus. Afterall the collection is meant as a contradiction to Songs of Innocence – the latter showing life through the eyes of innocent children, while Songs of Experience illustrate an "experienced" view of the world. However, to simply polarise the two would be a gross injustice to the complexities of Blake's work. Upon close inspection, it is actually possible to detect a slim thread of hope within the negative future Blake describes within Songs of Experience. As long as one can appreciate the deep subtleties inherent within the poems instead of simply taking them as face value, one would be able to understand why the collection is not "entirely pessimistic." Though the future presented is bleak, Blake still presents a solution out of our problems, giving us hope, however slim, for our future.
             This may be hard to swallow for most unless one bears in mind that there is a myriad of possible interpretations of Blake's poetry. There is no one definite interpretation as each poem contains a wealth of meanings - even a single word could hold a different significance for different readers. Instead of seeking to determine the correct answer, one must bear in mind that it is possible to have utterly different interpretations of the same poem, without the interpretations being mutually contradictory. Thus within the desolate warnings, these poems appear to be on the surface, slender strands of hope are hidden, evident only to the conscientious reader. Blake provides this hope in several ways.
             Firstly, in some of these poems, for example "The Fly" and "To Tirzah", the speaker is merely confused. Though capable of great thought, these speakers are daunted with the problem of coming to terms with their painful experiences in this world. Lost, they turn to rationalism t...