Auguries of Innocence

This article is about the poem by William Blake. For the book of the same name by Patti Smith, see Auguries of Innocence (Patti Smith poems).

Auguries of Innocence is a poem from one of William Blake's notebooks now known as The Pickering Manuscript. It is assumed to have been written in 1803, but was not published until 1863 in the companion volume to Alexander Gilchrist's biography of William Blake. The poem contains a series of paradoxes which speak of innocence juxtaposed with evil and corruption. The poem is 132 lines and has been published with and without breaks that divide the poem into stanzas. An augury is a sign or omen.

Lines from the poem were set to music in 1965 by Benjamin Britten as part of his song cycle Songs and Proverbs of William Blake.

References

• The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1986, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press