SOURCE: Smith, K. E. “Our Immortal Day: Songs of Innocence I.” In An Analysis of William Blake's Early Writings and Designs to 1790 Including Songs of Innocence, pp. 153-83. Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1999.

In the following excerpt, Smith suggests various connections among the individual poems of Songs of Innocence.

And there the lions ruddy eyes, Shall flow with tears of gold: And pitying the tender cries, And walking round the fold: Saying: wrath by his meekness, And by his health, sickness, Is driven away, From our immortal day. 

—‘Night’ (E [The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, Ed. David V. Erdman, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1988] 14)

I

This stanza from ‘Night’ reminds us precisely how far Blake has moved from the world of Barbauld's Hymns. There we were concerned with a kind of naturalistic claim for the innocence and goodness of the world of childhood, a claim...