The Exclusion of God
When reading the two versions of William Blake’s poem “The Divine Image,” found in his collections Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, the differences present themselves immediately. Just observing the incongruence of lengths reveals that these works vary greatly.
One reason for the shorter length of the Experience version of “The Divine Image” lies in Blake’s omission of talk about God, or any hopeful or positive force. In Innocence, Blake spends entire stanzas discussing the relationship between God and man, and of the prayer to “Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace” (16).