In 1794 Blake produced his second collection of poems, Songs of Experience, linking it with his earlier Songs of Innocence to produce two sets of companion poems, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

The second volume added twenty-five poems and twenty-seven plates (one poem was not published in any copies during Blake's lifetime), giving a total of forty-four poems and fifty-four accompanying plates. In the combined publication, Blake rearranged many of the poems and plates, transferring some of the poems from Innocence to Experience. Blake colored the plates to the poems almost up to his death in 1827, the colorization becoming increasingly more elaborate; although the sequence became standardized after 1815.

The Songs of Innocence and of Experience proved to be the most popular of Blake's illuminated texts and is now regarded as a seminal work of English Romantic literature.

Shown here are four plates from Songs of Experience , including "The Tyger," the companion poem to "The Lamb" in the Songs of Innocence.