12-15 (all of the plates, then belonging to William Augustus White and now MMA, were shown). exhibition catalogue, Grolier Club, January 26-February 25. The Grolier Club Catalogue of Books, Engravings, Water-colors & Sketches by William Blake. The book remained in the Calvert family until the late nineteenth century in 1917, it became the first work purchased for the Metropolitan Museum's new Department of Prints by its distinguished first curator, William M. Its deep, saturated hues and distinctive ornamental borders (found on only one other copy) contrast with the lighter, paler colors of editions printed three decades earlier. Blake produced only twenty-four copies of the combined volume this page comes from one of the last, prepared about 1825 for the painter and printmaker Edward Calvert (1799–1883). Published during the height of the Terror, the French Revolution left its mark on the second book. The pastoral poems in Innocence express religious faith and acceptance, and exhibit fine detail and flowing lines the bardic verses in Experience, by contrast, convey disillusionment and anger, and employ bolder outlines. Innocence and Experience contrast human existence, before and after the Fall. Although its small, colorful format recalls a children's book, its message is sophisticated and complex.

Blake originally produced this small, richly illustrated collection of short lyric verses as two separate books, in 17, then combined them into a single volume in the latter year. One of Blake's best-known verses, 'The Tyger,' comes from the Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Songs of experience william blake