Blake was well known for his religiously inclined poems that told of the decent from innocence to experience in his books Songs of Innocence/ Experience. For Blake, innocence signifies purity and often embodies a child, where as experience is the knowledge of evil and frequently, if not always represented by an adult. In his counterpart poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger", Blake's hierarchy on the decent from virtue to corruption of man kind are uniquely, artfully and boldly expressed with an array of figurative language and the differentiation of the contradictory poems. "The Lamb", in Songs of Innocence, is a simple and delicate poem. The innocence of the poem is found merely in its simplicity. The poem should be taken almost entirely at face value. "The Lamb- is expressed through a candid perspective conveyed by the speaker, a child who questions the ways of the world and creation. Blake epitomizes children as the very essence of purity. Through the eyes of a child one is bought to the realization of its world and understands that it hasn't seen or known anything; therefore, it has no problems. It is this characteristic that allows a child to see humanity and the world through virgin eyes, hear life with fresh ears, and create a world with a pure heart, due to their lack of experience. However one needs to understand that it is not just the literal child that Blake refers to as innocent but rather an individual's child like characteristics and their pureness of heart. Throughout this poem, the child or the speaker constantly asks an apostrophic inquiry of the lamb, "Dost thou know who made thee?" (Line 2), and proceeds to answer his own queries by telling the lamb that God made him. The atmosphere is cheerful, bright, and warm; taking place in a spacious field by a small flowing stream with the little lamb and the little boy informing the animal of the graces of God.
Before we jump into the 'The Tyger' and 'The Lamb,' let's discuss the larger bodies of work the poems belong to. ... Blake's "The Tyger" is the contrast poem to "The Lamb". "The Tyger" is the experience of the loss of innocence that "The Lamb" seems to personify. ... "Tyger! Tyger! ...
Blake discusses that the creator of the lamb also calls Himself a Lamb. ... The poem begins with the opening hurdle of metaphor, "Tyger Tyger, burning bright-. ... "The Lamb- and "The Tyger- are the two contrary poems, which when first read, form an instant link in the reader's mind. ... The lamb is an emblem of innocence, corresponding to the tyger as the emblem of experience. The two contrary states of the human soul expressed in the subtitle of Songs of Innocence and Experience are nicely embodied in the ideas of these two animals - the lamb and the tyger. ...
The lamb emphasises a "blind faith", where the Tyger represents a skeptical doubt. ... In "The Tyger" this imagery is completely discarded, the meek and mild lamb, is replaced with a raging force of danger and chaos. ... But what is more striking is the direct changes from "The Lamb" to "The Tyger". ... The utopia of Jerusalem is lost from "The Lamb" to "The Tyger" and converted into a much grimmer imagery, suggesting that experience like the imagery in the Tyger is both dangerous and destructive. ... And this was often the turning point from innocence to experience, or from "The Lamb", to...
"The Lamb" and "The Tyger" are two animals created by and immortal being and both of the, have to coexist with one another on this planet. ... In the poem "The Lamb" the main method used throughout the poem is the use of answers and questions directed and the lamb. ... In the poem "The Tyger" the same method of answers and questions are used but this time they are toward the Tyger. ... The connection I drew between the two poems is that they talk about the creation of the beasts the Lamb and the Tyger. ... The Lamb is soft, pretty, and a prey while the Tyger is fearful, dreadful, and a pr...
Tyger! ... The writing style makes it seem the Lamb grew up and became the Tyger. Let us take a look at the two books of poems that The Lamb and The Tyger came from. ... I believe that the Tyger is the Lamb experienced and all grown up. ... (Norton, 54) The final line of The Tyger would then not the first question of the poem repeated, but a question asking who warped the gentle lamb into the form that of a freighting Tyger. ...
The lamb's counterpart from the Songs of Experience, "The Tyger" involves scenes of harsh jungle and a fearless creature stalking its" prey, with a much depressing diction. ... "The Tyger" is a rather different poem than "The Lamb" with images of "fire," (6) "hammer," (13) "furnaces," (14) and "spears" (17). ... Like "The Lamb," Blake opens "The Tyger" with a question in stanza one, "What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" ... In "The Tyger" the imagery is more infernal than heavenly. ... Blake's vision of creative force in the universe made a balance of inn...
Interpretation: "The Tyger" This poem is from Songs of Experience, so the generally accepted symbolism of it is that the Tyger represents experience and the Lamb innocence. However, other interpretations state that the Tyger represents the sensual and the Lamb the sensuous, another that the Tyger represents, "the Body," and the Lamb, "the Soul." Another interpretation goes so far, as to say, that the Tyger represents the physical world, and the Lamb the spiritual. ... The Tyger is beautiful, but at the same time fierce and terrible, with "fearful symmetry." ... Blake wonders what kind of c...
"THE LAMB" and "THE TYGER" In both poems, the speaker asks them by their origins. In The Lamb we get an answer, but it does not occur in The tyger, although this last poem is longer we do not have an explicit answer. We have in both poems the adjective "bright" in their description but expresses different things: in The Lamb, the animal is described as "wooly bright", which means tenderness; in the tyger is "burning bright", which is a rough definition. In The Lamb the author is identified as a child. ... In The Tyger the predominant feeling is surprise, admiration, fear (awe). ...
The two poems, "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," both by William Blake, can be analyzed and applied in many different ways. ... Later in the poem, Blake compares the lamb with Jesus Christ, The son of the Father whom himself created the lamb, and all that is beautiful and innocent. ... "The Tyger", in strong contrast to "The Lamb," is mysterious and malevolent, offering hints of destruction and doom. The opening lines of the poem "Tyger, Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night," shows early on in the poem that this "tiger" is capable of destroying the forests, which themselves are a bea...