Hear thy Voice by William Blake | Introduction to the Songs of Experience

‘Hear thy Voice’ is the first poem of the illustrated poetic collection Songs of Experience by William Blake which was published in 1794. Blake combined his two collections Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in the same year and republished them. Hear Thy Voice is the first poem or frontispiece of Songs of Experience and it is also known as Introduction to the Songs of Experience. The very first poem offers the contrast between the two separate collections. While Blake wrote Songs of Innocence at an early age and most of those poems are written more simply to resonate with younger audiences, the poems of Songs of Experience are more captivating with rich and intricate symbolism, imagery, and metaphoric mysticism.
Blake wrote Songs of Innocence while opposing the idea of Original Sin and suggested that childhood is a protected state of innocence but it is not immune to the corrupt ways of the fallen world and its institutions. Thus, he stressed the importance of children's literature and juvenile education. His idea of innate innocence and goodness in human beings became the centerstone of Romanticism.
The Illustrative figure of Hear Thy Voice shows the same shepherd and winged child from the “Innocence” frontispiece. But the shepherd has captured the winged child and wrestled him firmly upon his head, pinning his arms to the earth, restricting his flying. The poem suggests that contemporary ideas and reason have restricted the creativity and imagination of people and they must raise their voice. Hear Thy Voice is an invocation to all of humankind to cast off their degenerate condition of suffering and blindness and to begin to self-govern the material universe (“fallen fallen light renew”) instead of remaining its prisoner.
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