The Tyger And The Lamb By William Blake

such a terrifying beast?” and “Who is God who dares to make such a terrifying

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).

In “The Lamb” by William Blake, you will see that, if analyzed closely, the lamb is a personal symbol which signifies God himself. The innocence of a child is like that of a lamb, and serves as a model for humans to follow. In the first stanza, the speaker is the child who is also the teacher. The child asks the lamb who gave him life and all his needs, along with a voice so "tender”. Then, the child declares that he will tell the lamb who their creator is. The creator shares the same name as the lamb, which is a reference to Jesus Christ. The end of the poem is giving way to a blessing which, gives an expression of the child’s adoration at the connection the lamb makes in child,

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.

William Blake’s 1793 poem “The Tyger” has many interpretations, but its main purpose is to question God as a creator. Its poetic techniques generate a vivid picture that encourages the reader to see the Tyger as a horrifying and terrible being. The speaker addresses the question of whether or not the same God who made the lamb, a gentle creature, could have also formed the Tyger and all its darkness. This issue is addressed through many poetic devices including rhyme, repetition, allusion, and symbolism, all of which show up throughout the poem and are combined to create a strong image of the Tyger and a less than thorough interpretation of its maker.

In the poem “The Tyger” by William Blake, the use of rhyme, repetition, allusion, and symbolism all help the reader understand the theme and what was going through the authors thoughts while writing. William Blake was a mystic poet who channeled his thoughts and questions to write poems. He questioned the creator of both the Tyger and lamb, how could the same God create a destructive creature like the Tyger and on the other hand create a gentle animal, the lamb. This ties into the theme of the poem of how a God could and would create a monster like the Tyger.

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 .

Throughout “Innocence” there are many references to “The Lamb” representing Jesus Christ who was the Sacrificial Lamb, as shown in the poem “The Lamb.” Another common image of religion used by Blake is that of religion as the Shepherd, the Shepherd is “watchful” and ever watching over his sheep, protecting them, Blake is showing religion as

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

William Blake was a painter, engraver and poet of the Romantic era, who lived and worked in London. Many of Blake’s famous poems reside in his published collection of poems titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This collection portrays the two different states of the human soul, good and evil. Many poems in the Songs of Innocence have a counterpart poem in the Songs of Experience. The poem “A Poison Tree” is found in the Songs of Experience and it delves into the mind of man tainted with sin and corruption that comes with experience. In a simple and creative style, the religious theology of the Fall of Man is brought to life. The poem tells the story of how man fell from a state of innocence to impurity, focusing on the harmful repercussions of suppressed anger. Blake utilities many literary devices to successfully characterizes anger as an antagonist with taunting power.

show a large amount of similarity, as well as differences, both in the way he

William Blake’s The Tyger and The Lamb are both very short poems in which the author poses rhetorical questions to what, at a first glance, would appear to be a lamba lamb and a tiger. In both poems he uses vivid imagery to create specific connotations and both poems contain obvious religious allegory. The contrast between the two poems is much easier to immediately realize . “The lamb” was published in a Blake anthology entitled “The songs of experience” which depicted life in a much more realistic and painful light. Both poems share a common AABB rhyme scheme and they are both in regular meter. In “The Tyger” Blake paints a picture of a powerful creature with eyes of fire and dread hands and feet. He asks rhetorical questions with a respectful awe that is almost fearful and makes the setting more foreign to the reader by including imagery like “the forest of the night” By contrast. Blake’s portrait of the lamb is one of innocence and child like wonderment “The Tyger is almost an examination of the horrors in the world while “The lamb examines only that which is “bright,”tender, “mild”. The use of words like “night,” “burning’ and “terrors in the tyger”create quite a contrary image for the reader than that of “The lamb.”

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.

In “The Tyger” it states, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” (Blake line 20). William Blake’s curiosity makes the reader feel uncertain. He only highlights the importance of the tyger through asking questions. Blake’s questions were challenging the principles of Christianity. He was underling why God created the beautiful lamb and the ferocious tyger. He wanted people to know that the world is filled with tranquility and disturbance. God himself wants people to adhere to the opposites of life. The way we humans deal with beauty with horror and love with pain. God is the creator of both creatures, but also the creator of such emotions presented within them.

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. He was not recognized during his lifetime and now is considered as a seminal figure and criticised over the twentieth and even this century. Blake’s strong philosophical and religious beliefs in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. Although he was from London he spent his entire life in Felpham.