Songs of Innocence and Experience: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Songs of Innocence and Experience, credited to William Blake, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

Librivox recording of Songs of Innocence and Experience, by William Blake. William Blake's volume of poetry entitled Songs of Innocence and Experience is the embodiment of his belief that innocence and experience were "the two contrary states of the human soul," and that true innocence was impossible without experience. Songs of Innocence contains poems either written from the perspective of children or written about them. Many of the poems appearing in Songs of Innocence have a counterpart in Songs of Experience, with quite a different perspective of the world. The disastrous end of the French Revolution caused Blake to lose faith in the goodness of mankind, explaining much of the despair found in Songs of Experience. Blake also believed that children lost their innocence through exploitation and from a religious community which put dogma before mercy. He did not, however, believe that children should be kept from becoming experienced entirely. In truth, he believed that children should indeed become experienced but through their own discoveries, which is reflected in a number of these poems. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia by Annie Coleman) For more information on our readers, see our catalog page: http://librivox.org/songs-of-innocence-and-experience-by-william-blake/ For more free audiobooks, or to become a volunteer reader, please visit librivox.org

Recording facts

• Recording title: Songs of Innocence and Experience
• Author credits: William Blake
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 47
• Listed recording duration: 1:21:55

Catalogue topics

• poetry

Opening tracks: first 24 of 47

1. Introduction (Innocence) — 1:29
2. The Shepherd (Innocence) — 1:00
3. The Echoing Green (Innocence) — 1:34
4. The Lamb (Innocence) — 1:28
5. The Little Black Boy (Innocence) — 2:56
6. The Blossom (Innocence) — 1:06
7. The Chimney-Sweeper (Innocence) — 2:44
8. The Little Boy Lost (Innocence) — 0:53
9. The Little Boy Found (Innocence) — 0:50
10. Laughing Song (Innocence) — 1:10
11. A Cradle Song (Innocence) — 2:18
12. The Divine Image (Innocence) — 1:41
13. Holy Thursday (Innocence) — 2:11
14. Night (Innocence) — 2:53
15. Spring (Innocence) — 1:23
16. Nurse's Song (Innocence) — 1:40
17. Infant Joy (Innocence) — 1:09
18. A Dream (Innocence) — 1:38
19. On Another's Sorrow (Innocence) — 2:33
20. Introduction (Experience) — 1:34
21. Earth's Answer (Experience) — 1:54
22. The Clod and the Pebble (Experience) — 1:36
23. Holy Thursday (Experience) — 1:55
24. The Little Girl Lost (Experience) — 3:06

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.