Analysis Of William Blake's Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience

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,

The Songs of Innocence poems first appeared in Blake’s 1784 novel, An Island in the Moon. In 1788, Blake began to compile in earnest, the collection of Songs of Innocence. And by 1789, this original volume of plates was complete. These poems are the products of the human mind in a state of innocence, imagination, and joy; natural euphoric feelings uninhibited or tainted by the outside world. Following the completion of the Songs of Innocence plates, Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and it is through this dilemma of good and evil and the suffering that he witnesses on the streets of London, that he begins composing Songs of Experience. This second volume serves as a response to Songs of

William Blake’s poem “The Lamb” is a simplistic poem until you read deeper into it and find a powerful and uplifting religious message about creation. Blake is able to draw people into his poem by having a young innocent child as the speaker, asking rhetorical questions to a lamb. Although he also throws irony into the second stanza by having the young child answer his own questions, asked in the first stanza. The poem has a tone so sweet and soft that it is not offensive in any means and is not affected by cynicism of the older generations. Blake’s poem is one of the most famous poems in English literature because of the spiritual message left between the lines.

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 order to exist in nature and in human, innocence requires experience. The author, William Blake divided his poems into two volumes which are Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. “The Lamb” is the poem from Songs of Innocence and “The Tyger” is from Songs of Experience. In “The Lamb,” Blake writes in an incomplex, childlike way asking an innocent lamb who made it. In “The Tyger,” Blake asks who could have possibly made something as formidable as the tiger. William Blake uses archetypes in his poems “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.”

as her own because she doesn't want to let go of them and wishes that

The child questions the lamb as to where he came from and asks, “Little Lamb, who made thee?/ Dost though know who made thee?/” (Blake 1-2) Throughout the poem the speaker continues to argue the lamb about its nature, as if to repress the lamb’s self worth. When the child receive no answers, he decides that he will tell the lamb where he came from. He says, “Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee!” (12). Jesus was a child once and the speaker relates saying, “I a child &ump; thou a lamb/ We are called by his name.” ( 17-18), meaning we are all Lambs of God. The child then ends the poem by sending God’s blessings to the lamb. Blake is speaking of what he sees are the positive aspects of the common beliefs of Christianity. However, it is not an accurate picture of the world because there it does not speak about the presence of evil in our world, which is followed by his poem "The Tyger".

“The Lamb”, by William Blake, is a joyous Christian poem about one of the most innocent animals created by God; although this poem is mostly about a lamb, it also explains how God has created everything.

Romantic Poetry: Blake’s Biblical References William Blake’s illustrated collection of poems, “Songs of Innocence and Experience”, were written to contrast the different elements of the human soul. Throughout the collection, Blake redefines both innocence and experience, and closely contrasts them through two parallel poems, “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”. Both poems incorperate biblical references, amd present a clearer view of the relationship between innocence and experience. Blake was a pious man, and as a young child, he had visions of God, angels, and believed to have recieved messages from his deceased brother.

Ultimately this is a surprisingly simple poem with a relatively deep underlying message. This format syncs up beautifully with the poems messages of a lamb's innocence and therefore a child’s innocence. The style is also accentuated with the simple verbiage, the use of repetition, and the device of a child narrator. The larger theme comes into play-still dealing with religion-when the poem is aligned with its counterpart The Tyger, to question God’s intentions behind him creating all of humanity including what is holy and virtuous, and what is vile and

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

William Blake thought the role of the child to be innocence. Witnessing two of his

Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are contrasting views of the same events. Each contains a collection of poems that profile an idea, figure, or event. In Songs of Innocence the world is viewed through the Eyes of someone like a child, who has little life experience. In Songs of Experience the same world is looked at only this time from the standpoint of someone who has experience in life, most likely an adult. The major difference between the two viewpoints is the understanding for life and

Some of William Blake’s poetry is categorized into collections called Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Blake explores almost opposite opinions about creation in his poems “The Lamb” and “The Tiger.” While the overarching concept is the same in both, he uses different subjects to portray different sides of creation; however, in the Innocence and Experience versions of “The Chimney Sweeper,” Blake uses some of the same words, rhyme schemes, and characters to talk about a single subject in opposite tones.