note:
I greatly enjoyed revisiting this song from my first solo project Knowledge and Innocence. On the original track, “Song of Innocence” was recorded as a duet with my dear friend Randy Stonehill, and Bob Bennett can also be heard on the track singing the gentle background vocals on the turnaround near the end of the song.
William Blake’s “The Lamb,” along with a couple of other Blake poems, greatly inspired the lyrics and in fact, within the song, I either directly quote or paraphrase some of the great man’s poetry. Blake was an artist and poet who was prone to visions (some of them quite bizarre), and with "SOI" I was attempting to create a musical and lyrical ambience reflective of Blake’s gentler, more accessibly orthodox visionary works. My children were still young at the time I wrote "SOI" (both of them can be seen on the back cover of Knowledge and Innocence) and fairytales were read often in our home, so in conceptualizing the song I imagined it as the kind of Victorian-era allegorical myth I would enjoy reading to my little ones.
lyrics
A child floating down on a cloud in the sky
Said "Sing me a song 'bout a lamb"
So I sang and he smiled, so I sang again
As he placed a reed in my hand
And with my rural pen I stained the water clear
And wrote this song for every little child to hear
A song of innocence A song of goodness & light
A song of innocence A song of goodness & light
Said the child hovering there on his cloud in the sky
"Please sing me the song once again"
And when it was over, he vanished from sight
These are the words sung to him
The One who's meek and mild you'll find is always near
And I will sing this song for every child to hear
A song of innocence (Little lamb, who made thee?)
A song of goodness & light (Little lamb, I'll tell you)
A song of innocence (He is called by thy name)
A song of goodness & light (He became a child, too)
A child floating down on a cloud in the sky
Said "Sing me a song 'bout a lamb"
A song of innocence
A song of goodness & light
A song of innocence
A song of goodness & light
A song of innocence
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