William Blake's Songs Of Innocence and Songs of Experience are sets of poems that represent his belief that the human soul has "two contrary states."" The two sets of poems may clash together in terms of their perspective, but Blake found it necessary to marry to two in hope of reaching a state of higher, or organized innocence. Blake meant to collect all the poems from both sets and put them into one collection as a way to represent his view on the traditional Fall of man. Innocence represents Eden, experience represents the Fall, and the higher innocence represents the Fortunate Fall. In The Lamb and The Tyger, Blake sets up these contrary states that represent the human soul and shows how the two do not truly repel each other, but how they are dependent on each other to obtain a higher innocence, and escape primitive duality, and abandon notions of good and evil.
The simplest way to describe The Lamb is that it is prelapsarian, that is to say, life before the fall. This lies mostly in the voice of the poem, which closely resembles that of a child. Blake's diction reveals this with words such as "little."" "life,"" "softest,"" "tender,"" "lamb,"" and obviously, "child."" The speaker is talking rather simplistically to a lamb that most likely does not wonder where it came from or who created it; however, talking to lamb is a way for the child to remember where it came from, where all things come from. .
The poem mirrors Paradise in that there is simple language, no trace of sorrow, pain, or unusual devices/techniques in the actual presentation of the poem. There is an overwhelming sense of naivety in the poem that makes this simple view of "good- to be unreliable. Blake sets up this notion that this is the true way of living, but later on will disagree with this as being the solely "good- existence. In lines 10-20 Blake writes:.
Little Lamb I'll tell thee,.
Little Lamb I'll tell thee!.
