Timeline
William Blake - Auguries of Innocence, published c.1803-7
Apart from the first four lines the poem is written in couplets which have the resonance of proverbs, offering pithy, memorable truths and warnings.
The poem moves across a wide range of subjects but may be thought to have the general theme of how we ought to live in the world, of how society should be and human action in it.
Each couplet is a sign, an omen or divination, of innocence, of what virtue is and how it should be practised. Each couplet in itself, or by way of an opposite implied, tells a moral truth, criticises an evil, upholds a value.