Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry, and his work has only grown in popularity. Сontains many of the basic religious ideas developed in the major prophecies. Blake analyzes the development of organized religion as a perversion of ancient visions. “Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.” Instead of looking for God on remote altars, Blake warns, man should look within.

In the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake investigates, as he puts it in the subtitle, 'the two contrary states of the human soul'. Blake’s vision embraces radical subjects such as poverty, child labour and abuse, the repressive nature of the state and church, as well as the right of children to be treated as individuals with their own desires. Many of the poems in Songs of Experience respond to counterparts in Songs of Innocence.

Blake inspired some works of David Brown, Philip Pullman and Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison.