Summary

The first poem in Songs of Innocence, entitled “Introduction,” establishes the speaker of the poems, presumably William Blake himself, as a piper, “piping down the valleys wild” (4). Suddenly he comes across a child sitting on a cloud, who asks him to pipe a song about a lamb. When the speaker complies with the request the child is delighted, and asks him to drop his pipe and sing a song of happy cheer. The speaker complies once more, and weeping tears of joy, the child asks him to “sit thee down and write/in a book, that all may read” before vanishing from sight (4). The speaker then plucks a reed and turns it into a pen in order to write his songs for every child to hear.

“The Shepherd” is a short, eight-line poem about a shepherd herding his lot of sheep “from the...