William Blake

1757 – 1827

The Tyger and The Lamb were both poems by William Blake. Blake as a child
was an outcast, and did not have many friends. He was educated from home by his
parents and fond sociability difficult. His family believed very strongly in God but did
not agree with the teaching of the church. During his lonely hours Blake often read
read the Bible. He had a lot of free time to think about ideas reflect on life. You could
find a lot of biblical discourse in his poems. Blake published very famous books of
poems: Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence. Poems from the Songs of
Experience are all about the God who brought all the evil and suffering ino the world.
The poems from the Songs of Innocence are about the redemptive God of the New
Testament, like Jesus. The Lamb is from the Songs of Innocence and The Tyger is
from the Songs of Experience. The Lamb is the contrasting poem to the The Tyger.

The Lamb

Little Lamb, who made thee? Little Lamb, I ´ll tell thee,

Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb, I´ll tell thee.

Gave thee life, and bid thee feed, He is called by thy name,

By the stream and o´er the mead For He calls Himself a Lamb.

Gave thee clothing of delight, He is meek, and He is mild,

Softest clothing, wooly, bright, He became a little child.

Gave thee such a tender voice, I a child, and thou a lamb,

Making all the vales rejoice? We are called by His name.

Little Lamb, who made thee? Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb God bless thee!

The Lamb has two stanzas, each containing five rhymed couplets.
Repetition in the first and last couplet of each stanza makes these lines into refrain.
 The poem begins with the question: „Little Lamb, who made thee?“ The
speaker asks the lamb about its origins. In the next stanza, the speaker attempts
a ridding answer to his question: the lamb was made by one who „calls himself
a Lamb“, who is both – the child and the lamb. The poem ends with with the child
bestowing a blessing on the lamb.

This poem is a child´s song, in the form of a questions and answers. The first
stanza is descriptive and the second focueses on abstract spirituals matters and
contains explanation and analogy. The child´s question is naive and profound and
answer reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and his innocent. The
lamb symbolizes Jesus.

The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores the Chrisitan values of

gentless and peace. The image of the child is associted with Jesus. The child –
speaker approaches the ideas of nature and of God. This poem accepts what Blake
saw as the more positive aspects of conventional Christian belief. But it does not
provide a completely adequate doctrine, because it fails to account for the
presence of evil in the world. The pendant poem to this one is The Tyger, taken
together, the two poems give a perspective on religion that includes the good and
clear as well as the terrible and instructable.

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright What the hammer? What the chain?

In the forests of the night, In what furnance was thy brain?

What immortal hand or eye What the anvil? What dread grasp

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? Dare its dealy terrors clasp?

In what distant deeps or skies When the stars threw down their spears

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? And water´d heaven with their tears,

On what wings dare he aspire? Did he smile his work to see?

What the hand dare seize the fire? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

And what shoulder, and what art, Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright

Could twist the sinews of thy heart? In the forest of the night,
And when thy heart began to beat, What immortal hand or eye,

What dread hand? And what dread feet? Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The poem is comprised of six rhymed couplets. It begins with the speaker
asking a tiger what kind of divine being could have created it. „What immortal hand
or eye could frame they fearful symmetry“. Each stanza contains further question.
From what part of the cosmos could the tiger´s eyes have come, and who would
have dared to handle that fire? The speaker wonders how, once that horible „heart
began to beat“ its creator would have had the courage to continue the job. And when
the job was done, the speaker wonders, how would the creator have felt? „Did he
smile his work to see?“ Could this possibly be the same being who made the lamb?

The opening question enacts what will be the single dramatic gesture of the
poem. Blake is buliding on the conventional idea that nature, must in some way
contain a reflection of its creator. The tiger is beautiful yet also horrific in its capacity
for violence. What kind of God could or would design such a terrifying beats as the
tiger? What does the underiable existence of evil and violence in the world tell us
about nature of God, and what does it mean to live in a world where a being can at
once contain both beauty and horor?

The poem takes a symbolic character. It comes to embody the spirituel and
moral problem the poem explores: perfectly beautiful and yet perfectly destructive,
Blake´s tiger becomes the symbolic center for an investigation into the presence of
evil in the world. The poem´s series of questions ask what sort of physical creative
capacity the „featful symmetry“ of the tiger bespeaks, assumedly only a very strong
and powerful being could be capable of such a creation. For the poem speaker
addresses not only the question of who could make such a creature as the tiger, but
who would perform it. In the third stanza, the parelelism of „shoulder“ and „art“ as
well as the fact that is not just the body but also the „heart“ of the tiger that is being
forget.

The reference to the lamb reminds the reader that a figer and a lamb have
been created by the same God, and raises questions about the implication of this. It
also invites a contrast between the perspectives of experience and innocence
represented in the poem „The Tyger“ and in the poem „The Lamb“. Another contrast
si contrast of the easy confidence, in „The Lamb“ with the open awe of „The
Tyger“. The is the predator and the lamb the prey of the tiger. The Tyger brings the
mood of power, dark and dangerous and The Lamb brings the light, clear and
goodnes. The tiger symbolized adult and the lamb symbolized a childhood. The two
creations, the Lamb and the Tiger are not only oposites, but they create a paradox
in the mind of speaker. After all, how could a God who created something as soft,
innocent and pure as the lamb aslo create the tiger, who is characterized as being
such ruthless predator? The Tyger is fifteen questions and no answer. While The
Lamb has seven questions, and answers to all of the questions.

The message of his poems were fairly obvious. In a way, he asking the same
questions many of us find ourselves asking as regards the creation of this universe.
How did we get here? What purpose do we serve? Blake is attempting to prove by
the complexity of the creatures of this world that there is indeed a creator God and
that we are not simply a product of circumstance.
 Prešovská univerzita v Prešove, Fakulta
humanitných a prírodných vied
Katedra anglického jazyka

Teória literatúry
Lewis Carroll – Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking
Glass

Mgr. Petra Kiššková

Anglický jazyk – rozširujúce štúdium