"Gave thee life and bid thee feed.
By the stream and o'er the mead: .
Gave thee clothing of delight.
Softest clothing wooly, bright:.
Gave thee such a tender voice,.
Making all the vales rejoice." .
The constant repetition of the word "Gave" emphasises the child's vision that life is a gift. The child sees God as the creator, he is never doubtful, and this is what Blake saw as representative of innocence. The rhyme scheme and the flow of the poem, with its natural imagery, give the feel of a 'fairy tale' like atmosphere, and seem to reinforce the subject matter of the poem, as innocent and childlike. .
The majority of the poems in Songs of Innocence have an emphasis on religious themes and an admiration of pastoral naivety. Blake longed for this natural beauty to be a part of England, and this is powerfully depicted in the beginning of Milton. .
"I will not cease from Mental fight, .
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand.
Till we have built Jerusalem .
In England's green and pleasant land." .
In this poem, the beauty of Jerusalem has been lost with the Industrial Revolution. Blake mentions his longing desire to restore this image, which is dominant in "The Lamb". In the first stanza, Blake uses imagery of a 'stream' and a 'mead' as well as "clothing of delight, softest clothing woolly bright.' This Pastoral imagery, as seen in Milton, is a dream for Blake, it is his idea of a utopia, and by associating this utopia with "The Lamb" and the subject of childhood, the reader notices Blake's admiration of the child and the innocence childhood embodies. .
The first stanza raises the question.
"Little lamb who made thee?.
Dost thou know who made thee?" .
The second stanza responds with the answer that it was God, and " He calls himself a lamb. He is meek and he is mild, he became a little child." Blake offers his love for God in this stanza by comparing God to the lamb, a symbol which he uses as innocence, good and purity.
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! ...
The Tyger signifies a duel purpose in this poem. ... The Tyger may very well be the image of God that man has twisted and conformed to fit into the experienced world society has become, and by this event, He is no longer one with man as He was in the Lamb. ... The Tyger(Songs of Experience) Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry In what distant deeps or skies. ... Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry! The Lam...
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" 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...