The Untamed Wilderness

The untamed wilderness is a setting that appears in several of the poems throughout Songs of Innocence. Such poems primarily include “The Blossom,” “The Little Boy Lost,” “Laughing Song,” “Night,” and “Spring.” Blake presents this untamed wilderness as existing dually in pleasant, idyllic states and dangerous, foreboding states. With regard to the former, poems such as “Laughing Song” and “Spring” emphasize the beauty of the natural world, emphasizing certain characteristics such as “the green woods,” “the dimpling stream,” and the “lively green” meadows (16). Meanwhile, poems such as “Little Boy Lost” and “Night” highlight some of the more dangerous aspects of the wild, such as its inhospitable nature and the predators that inhabit it.

Wilderness is also explored in several of the poems within Songs of Experience, most notably in “The Little Girl Lost” and “The Little Girl Found.” In these two poems, the wilderness is presented...