The Lamb By William Blake

Throughout Blake's life, the Bible played a crucial part in his poetic genius and is the spark that started his love for painting Gothic paintings. He obtained most of his education through readings of the Bible, either using it as object of criticism or as an inspiration for his life's work. According to Blake, all religions were products of the Imagination or Poetic Genius and therefore contain the same essential truths.Though Blake is known to be a self-taught poet, his work hasn't yet stopped inspiring people.

In the poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," William Blake uses symbolism, tone, and rhyme to advance the theme that God can create good and bad creatures. The poem "The Lamb" was in Blake's "Songs of Innocence," which was published in 1789. "The Tyger," in his "Songs of Experience," was published in 1794. In these contrasting poems he shows symbols of what he calls "the two contrary states of the human soul" (Shilstone 1).

The most leading literary device used in Blake’s poems is symbolism. In this particular poem, “The Lamb” is a reference to God himself. This is because of the trinity that is involved with being a Christ follower. The trinity is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The child in the poem, is a symbol as innocence and purity just like Jesus Christ. Christians are to “receive the kingdom of God like a child” (Luke 18:17, ESV). This means that we are to have child-like faith, and trust in God, just like children do in their parents.

Just like the “lamb” that was born into this world through a virgin and was sacrificed for all mankind, this same “lamb” made us and called us by his name. In his poem "The Lamb," William Blake clearly uses repetition, personification, and symbolism to describe his religious beliefs and how a pure sacrifice is portrayed by a little lamb. Laura Quinney’s book, “William Blake on Self and Soul,” shows the religious side of Blake when it says, “Blake makes this argument in his address “To the Deists,” where he insists “Man must & will have Some Religion; if he has not the Religion of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan” (Quinney, 2009). Blake uses his religious view to show us he believes that our creator is the Lamb of God. He distinctively uses the innocence and purity of a little lamb and how its creator clearly takes care of it. The lamb is fed, given water by the stream and a bidden a blessed life.

Thesis Statement: The Lamb written by William Blake is a beautiful spiritually enriched poem that expresses God’s sovereignity, His love for creation and His gentleness in care and provisions for those that are His .

In Christian imagery, a pure white lamb represents Jesus Christ, purity, and innocence. The image of the lamb was perfect for Blake to use in a poem based upon innocence. In the poem “The Lamb,” the narrator (presumably a young Blake) is questioning if the lamn knows who created him. We find out that the narrator wasn’t asking the lamb for an answer, but rather if the lamb was aware enough to ask itself such a question. Blake tells the naive, clueless animal that it is the embodiment of Christ. “I a child & thou a Lamb. We are called by his name.” (Blake) This line is the revealing piece of information that tells us Blake is talking about purity. Through each stanza, archetypes of innocence drip from the lines, painting a picture of joy without worry.

Blake wanted people to read this poem and understand his concept of questioning God, for how could God make something so innocent and pure as the Lamb and then in turn make something so evil? The situation is very similar to the

Through this, Blake is showing the hypocrisy of religion, a theme commonly shown throughout “Experience.” Throughout “Innocence” a simple, child-like portrayal of religion is explored. This could show Blake as primarily a religious poet as there are common, simple themes running throughout many of his poems in “Innocence.” This simple view of both Christ and religion contrasts the complex metaphors used to represent religion in “Innocence.”

(Blake). “The Lamb” represents a religious symbol, possibly even the Christ figure, or the whole of humanity itself, which the “extensive use of symbols derived from Christianity and a more elaborate view of his theories about reality and knowledge” (“The Poetry of Blake”) provide which is not unprecedented seeing as, during this time period, it was common to reference symbols from biblical scriptures. The Lamb symbolizes the many children of God, as the biblical verse “The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23) quite clearly references. Blake’s poem states, “He became a little child: / I a child & thou a lamb” (Blake).

Blake begins the poem by stating that it is not possible to love another as much as yourself, and that thought is the highest of all human functions. This sets the stage for Blake's attack on religion's ideas of hierarchy and condemnation of rational thought. The next stanza describes the boy asking God, indicated by the capitalized "Father," how he could love him or another human more than a little bird picking up crumbs. The boy states that he loves God in and as much as a little bird. This echoes the naturalist ideas supported in the aforementioned poems. Blake seems to be saying that the proper way to worship and commune with God is by loving all natural beings, human and non-human. The priest, a symbol of organized religion that Blake so sharply critiques, overhears what the boy is saying and is infuriated by the idea that a person could worship God through nature, without ritual, politics, or human involvement, and that the boy dares use his mind to question what he has been taught. The priest makes the boy a martyr, preaching from his high pedestal of pomposity, and burns the boy, despite the cries of his family. The boy's curiosity and natural thinking have been squelched, and his imagination bound in iron chains. Blake closes the poem by asking if such

Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and

The Lamb' begins by a child asking the lamb if it knows who made it. The fact that the inquirer is a child is established later in the poem. The answer, of course, is God. The child describes the gifts God has given the lamb-life, food, clothing, and a sweet voice. In the second stanza, the child tells the lamb that it was made by God, and that 'he calls himself a lamb', and that 'he is a little child'. The poem ends with the child saying 'Little lamb, God bless thee!'

The poem begins with the question, "Little Lamb, who made thee?" The speaker, a child, asks the lamb about its origins: how it came into being, how it acquired its particular manner of feeding, its "clothing" of wool, its "tender voice." In the next stanza, the speaker attempts a riddling answer to his own question: the lamb was made by one who "calls himself a Lamb," one who resembles in his gentleness both the child and the lamb. The poem ends with the child bestowing a blessing on the lamb.

William Blake and his works have been discussed all his life and he always portrayed them in is poetry. It is his experiences and disgust with London society in the late 18th century .

Nature was a theme factoring in many of his works and Blake associates nature with different elements in these poems and we find that nature is seen in communion with God in the introductory poem and throughout these poems Blake points out the relationship and harmony between Man and Nature, children and Nature and he also talks about sex in Nature in `The Blossom'.