Blake was creating his engravings for John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative of Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam when the Saint-Domingue revolt broke out, and the rebellion influenced his work as surely as the French Revolution did. The well-planned uprising began in August, 1791, at night as slaves set sugar cane fields afire.

It is well-know that in Songs of Experience several of the poems are direct contraries to some of the Songs of Innocence, the precise nature of this opposition being reflected in the subtitle of the combined Songs of Innocence and of Experience: "Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul."