William Blake’s poems “Infant Joy” and “Infant Sorrow” propose a dual conception of life’s beginnings. Happily cradled in a blossom, the newborn who christens himself Joy inspires a symbiotic happiness in his mother. Another infant describes birth as an abrupt leap into a dangerous world. He is inconsolable, likening himself to “a fiend hid in a cloud”—the cause of his mother’s pain and his father’s tears. Through stylistic nuances in the relief-etched lettering and overall designs, Blake reinforces the separateness of these alternate entries into the world and the divergent lives to come. This impression of “Infant Sorrow,” one of three examples in the Morgan’s collection, is taken from one of the few copies of the combined Songs that Blake left uncolored.
William Blake (1757–1827), Songs of Innocence. [London]: The author and printer W. Blake, 1789. Bequest of Tessie Jones in memory of her father, Herschel V. Jones, 1968, PML 58636. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. [London]: The author and printer W. Blake, [ca. 1795]. Purchased with the Toovey Collection, 1899, PML 954.