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There may, however, be a higher form of spiritual nature full of active benevolence. In "The Blossom," the speaker takes joy in the sight of a flower while also realizing that nature, in a strictly material sense, is impersonal. While their souls are equally white, the black boy believes that his skin color is a result of over-exposure to one of the most obvious signs of God's love: The sun. In "The Little Black Boy," a child of African descent compares his skin to that of a white boy. Here, Blake characterizes the Almighty God as a gentle and meek creature, as pleasant as His softest creations, specifically the lamb. It is also one of his most explicitly religious. The next poem, "The Lamb," is one of Blake's most famous poems. "The Echoing Green" is more melancholy than some of the other Innocence poems, because it is told from the perspective of the elderly watching children play. In "The Shepherd," Blake continues to exalt this gentle vocation, which requires little of the shepherd except to listen to the "innocent call" and "gentle reply" of lambs and ewes. Songs of Innocence contains nineteen poems, including an introduction in which Blake casts himself as a shepherd, writing words to the happy songs he plays on his pipe for the benefit of a child he meets on a cloud.

The two volumes are widely considered some of Blake's best and most influential works, setting the stage for the Romantic Era in European art. Through experience, Blake suggests, innocence is replaced by fear and inhibition. Rather, innocence is lost by experiencing the social, ethical, and political corruption of institutions like the Church, the government, and the ruling class.

However, unlike in Milton, it is not pride or folly that causes a person to lose the paradise of innocence. Childhood is not sin, Blake suggests, but a kind of protected innocence not unlike the Paradise of Milton's Paradise Lost. For Blake, innocence and experience are the "two contrary states of the soul," and differ greatly from the prevailing Christian idea that children are born into "original sin" but can later achieve "salvation" through the Church. Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a two-volume illustrated book of poetry published in 17 by the English poet and painter William Blake.