Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience explore the contrast between the innocence of youth and the experience of age through the gentle lamb and the dire tiger. The poem The Lamb” uses childish repetitions and simple language to represent youthful purity. In contrast, “The Tyger” is harsh and features complex language to represent experience and maturity. The author uses a chant-like repetition to ask many questions throughout the poem.
The question at hand is: Could the same creator have made both the tiger and the lamb? For William Blake, the answer is a frightening one. The Romantic Period’s affinity towards childhood is epitomized in the poetry of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. Little Lamb, who made thee?/ Dost thou know who made thee?” (Blake 1-2). The Lamb’s introductory lines set the style for what follows: an innocent poem about an amiable lamb and its creator. It is divided into two stanzas, the first containing questions of whom it was who created such a docile creature with “clothing of delight” (Blake 6). There are images of the lamb frolicking in divine meadows and babbling brooks.
The stanza closes with the same inquiry with which it began. The second stanza begins with the author claiming to know the lamb’s creator and proclaiming that he will tell him. Blake then states that the lamb’s creator is none other than the lamb itself. Jesus Christ is often described as a lamb, and Blake uses lines such as he is meek and he is mild” (Blake 15) to accomplish this. Blake then makes it clear that the poem’s point of view is from that of a child when he says, “I am a child and thou a lamb” (Blake 17). The poem is one of a child’s curiosity, untainted conception of creation, and love of all things celestial.
The Lamb’s polar opposite is The Tyger. It’s the difference between a feel-good minister waxing warm and fuzzy for Jesus and a fiery evangelist preaching a hellfire sermon. Instead of the innocent lamb, we now have the frightful tiger – the emblem of nature red in tooth and claw – that embodies experience. William Blake’s words have turned from heavenly to hellish in the transition from lamb to tiger. Burnt the fire of thine eye” (Blake 6) and “What the hand dare seize the fire?” (Blake 7) are examples of how somber and serrated his language is in this poem.
No longer is the author asking about origins, but now he is asking if the one who made the innocuous lamb was capable of creating such a dreadful beast. Experience asks questions unlike those of innocence. Innocence asks why and how?”, while experience asks “why and how do things go wrong, and why me?”. Innocence is ignorance, and as they say, ignorance is bliss. Innocence has not yet experienced fiery tigers in its existence, but when it does, it wants to know how lambs and tigers are supposed to co-exist. The poem begins with “Could frame thy fearful symmetry” (Blake 4) and ends with “Dare frame thy fearful symmetry” (Blake 11). This is important because when the author initially poses the question, he wants to know who has the ability to make such a creature.
After further interrogation, the question evolves to who could create such a villain of its potential wrath, and why?” William Blake’s implied answer is “God.” In the poems, innocence is portrayed as exhilarating and graceful, contrasting with experience, which is ill-favored and formidable. According to Blake, God created all creatures, some in his image and others in their antithesis. “The Lamb” is written from a Romantic perspective, while “The Tyger” presents a divergent Hadean image to make the former more holy.
The Lamb, from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, is a fitting representation of the purity of heart in childhood during the Romantic period.
Bibliography: Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Tyger and The Lamb. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch.
New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999, 112-120.
