Critic Jennifer Waller describes the accompanying illustration adding meaning to the poem, saying "a twining vine bearing flamboyant flowers, suggesting passion and sexuality[;] the lower leaves of the plant are angular and strained and suggest a hint of impending experience."
Thus, for Waller "origins of the scene" lie in "the simplicity of domestic love through the expressions of frank sexuality".

Autonomy and selfhood center the relationship of the poem's two speakers, taking up Blake's common thematic emphasis on the nature of the "self".
Critic Heather Glen describes the second stanza as showing a very real experience in which a "child's sense of autonomous selfhood appears within a relationship of mutual joy."
Glen compares the autonomy the mother fosters in "Infant Joy" with that created by the Nurse in "Nurse's Song", where care and love for the child must be relinquished because the "child will eventually go its own separate way".
Critic Jennifer Waller describes the accompanying illustration adding meaning to the poem, saying "a twining vine bearing flamboyant flowers, suggesting passion and sexuality[;] the lower leaves of the plant are angular and strained and suggest a hint of impending experience." Thus, for Waller "origins of the scene" lie in "the simplicity of domestic love through the expressions of frank sexuality".
Autonomy and selfhood center the relationship of the poem's two speakers, taking up Blake's common thematic emphasis on the nature of the "self". Critic Heather Glen describes the second stanza as showing a very real experience in which a "child's sense of autonomous selfhood appears within a relationship of mutual joy." Glen compares the autonomy the mother fosters in "Infant Joy" with that created by the Nurse in "Nurse's Song", where care and love for the child must be relinquished because the "child will eventually go its own separate way".
Infant Joy