William Blake's use of symbols in Songs of Innocence and Experience are multi-faceted and complex. Similar symbols recur throughout both halves of the text, and Blake uses these reoccurring symbols to further develop the themes within his poems.

For example, churches are often used as negative symbols, referring to Blake's condemnation of organized religion's hypocrisy and repressive laws. In the poem "The Chimney Sweep" from Songs of Experience, the church is presented as a place people go to in order to feel holy and respectable while ignoring the suffering going on outside. The chimney sweeper condemns his parents, who let him freeze during his work while they go to church, feeling they have not done ill by their son since he finds small comfort in songs.

Flowers emerge as symbols in several poems as well, usually representing beauty and joy. In "The Garden of Love," the flowers representing childhood liberation are replaced by graves. The titular flower in "The Lilly" is contrasted with the thorny rose as a symbol of pure love that does not hurt those who seek to admire it. However, even the symbol of the flower is not always fully positive.

In "My Pretty Rose Tree," the speaker does not receive full pleasure from the rose tree, since it "turned away with jealousy, / And her thorns were my only delight." Though the speaker has been faithful to his tree, ignoring the offer of a lovelier flower at the start of the poem, he is not rewarded for his devotion.

As can be seen from the example of the flower in particular, Blake often builds upon his use of previous symbols, complicating their meaning and relationship with the themes of innocence and experience.

While the poems in “Songs of Innocence and Experience" may seem simple, Blake’s use of symbolism is quite complicated. Beginning with the title, I think Blake sees “innocence" and “experience" as two all-encompassing ways of being that exist simultaneously in the world. The famous pairing of the two poems “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” bear this out. In “The Lamb,” the lamb clearly symbolizes the work of a benevolent creator; the existence of the lamb is proof of God’s love for the world. In “The Tyger,” on the other hand, symbolizes all that is evil and terrible in the world, and suggests that God is brutally indifferent to both the sufferings of mankind. Blake himself poses the contradiction as a kind of accusation in the poem: “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

While it is tempting to read these symbols in a one dimensional, simplistic way, Blake’s worldview is not simple, and his handling of symbols allows him to create, in just a very few lines, a sense of the essential doubleness of the world. Take, for instance, “The Sick Rose.” This is a poem rife with symbols: the rose itself, the “invisible worm,” the “bed of crimson joy.” I think the way to read such a poem, or to understand these symbols, is to resist trying to assign specific meanings to them, but instead try to observe how these meanings are interlinked. How you understand the symbolic meaning of the rose, for example, changes how you interpret the other symbols in the poem.

I think the point of these poems, and their symbolism, is to embody, in the language itself, what Blake saw as the essential symbolic nature of reality.

This is a pretty big topic, and the first thing I would suggest is to narrow down your topic to a smaller thesis, as Blake uses several symbols and Songs of Innocence and Experience covers a lot of territory.

One recurring symbol that Blake uses is that of the Lamb, not only in the poem of that title, but in several of his other poems from that series, such as the Chimney Sweep. Blake's lamb is a multi-layered symbol in that it represents innocence, children and Christ all at the same time. You might want to frame your paper around that, using the poem "The Lamb" as your starting point. Then, you can look at how he uses the same symbol in other poems in the series.

You don't indicate if your essay is a research paper or just a response paper, but you can create the basic structure of a response paper by using the three intepretations of the Lamb and elaborating on each one as it occurs in several of the poems.  Then, if you need to add research, you can probably get what you need from the databases at your particular college and hang your supporting research on the framework you've already created in your response.

Discuss Blake's use of imagery an symbolism with detailed reference to specific poems in Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Answer in detail.

In William Blake's "The Lamb" from Songs of Innocence, the lamb symbolizes humankind. The poem's speaker asks in the first stanza, "Little Lamb who made thee," and offers imagery of "clothing of delight / softest clothing wooly bright" to establish the innocence of the lamb. The speaker goes on to explain that its maker "calls himself a lamb" too. The creator is presented as "meek" and "mild" just like his creation.

In Songs of Experience the speaker of "The Tyger" offers a contrasting view. In considering the creation of the tiger, the speaker wonders, "What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" He considers its fiery eyes and awe-inspiring physique and ponders, "Did he smile his work to see?"

Both poems invite the reader to take on the question of the nature of a God who created both a lamb and a tiger. In the penultimate stanza of "The Tiger," the speaker alludes to "The Lamb" by asking, "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" The contrast of a predator and prey raises questions about God's plan for the inhabitants of the Earth. The two poems also invite reflection on the nature of God; if he calls himself a lamb, does he also call himself a tiger?

Discuss Blake's use of imagery an symbolism with detailed reference to specific poems in Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Answer in detail.

In both versions of Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper," images of light and dark are used to characterize the children's experiences.  The version of this poem in Songs of Innocence portrays an angel that the boy Tom dreams about before he wakes to go with the other children to work.  In the final stanza of the poem, Tom is "happy and warm" after having had this dream although he is going to a dangerous job in the middle of winter.  The version in Songs of Experience on the other hand portrays a more grim picture of the realities of child labor.  The boy is described as a "little black thing among the snow" who cries because he is alone and suffering.  The color imagery in this version is related to death and stands in contrast to Blake's other version of "The Chimney Sweeper."