Piping down the valleys wild — William Blake

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Piping down the valleys wild, / Piping songs of pleasant glee, / On a cloud I saw a child, / And he laughing said to me:

William Blake

Source: Introduction, Songs of Innocence, 1789
Written: 1789

About this quotation

These are the opening lines of Songs of Innocence. The child on the cloud asks the piper first for a song about a lamb, then to sing it again, and finally to write it down “in a book that all may read”.

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