from Songs of Innocence and Experience by Blake and The Rivals by Sheridan: Eighteenth-century Civilization Exposed / Celebrated by Julian Thompson
'As Sheridan's play makes considerable use of poetic techniques, so Blake's poetry is strongly dramatic. The Songs have their origin, after all, in folk music and hymn-singing, and Blake was prepared to sing them to tunes now lost. Some of his poems possess formidable narrative drive (for example, 'A Poison Tree'), and in the composite volume the poems pair off in something like staged dialogues, one speaker reflecting the vision of humankind a moment before, the other moment after the Fall..................'
