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The lamb and the Tyger

 

            Blake was well known for his religiously inclined poems that told of the decent from innocence to experience in his books Songs of Innocence/ Experience. For Blake, innocence signifies purity and often embodies a child, where as experience is the knowledge of evil and frequently, if not always represented by an adult. In his counterpart poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger", Blake's hierarchy on the decent from virtue to corruption of man kind are uniquely, artfully and boldly expressed with an array of figurative language and the differentiation of the contradictory poems. "The Lamb", in Songs of Innocence, is a simple and delicate poem. The innocence of the poem is found merely in its simplicity. The poem should be taken almost entirely at face value. "The Lamb- is expressed through a candid perspective conveyed by the speaker, a child who questions the ways of the world and creation. Blake epitomizes children as the very essence of purity. Through the eyes of a child one is bought to the realization of its world and understands that it hasn't seen or known anything; therefore, it has no problems. It is this characteristic that allows a child to see humanity and the world through virgin eyes, hear life with fresh ears, and create a world with a pure heart, due to their lack of experience. However one needs to understand that it is not just the literal child that Blake refers to as innocent but rather an individual's child like characteristics and their pureness of heart. Throughout this poem, the child or the speaker constantly asks an apostrophic inquiry of the lamb, "Dost thou know who made thee?" (Line 2), and proceeds to answer his own queries by telling the lamb that God made him. The atmosphere is cheerful, bright, and warm; taking place in a spacious field by a small flowing stream with the little lamb and the little boy informing the animal of the graces of God.


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