...July 9, 2014 Enc1102 The Lamb and The Tyger In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience we are shown a comparison of nature. The innocent ‘lamb’ and the ferocious ‘Tyger’ are designed to be interpreted in comparison with each other. In the poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," William Blake uses symbolism, tone, and rhyme to express 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.While, "The Tyger," was in his "Songs of Experience," which was published in 1794. Blake's lamb and tiger symbolize two opposite views of God: the creator of good and evil. In "The Lamb," Blake uses the symbol of the lamb to paint a picture of innocence. The lamb is a symbol of Jesus Christ. The poem begins with the question, Little Lamb who made Thee?” the speaker, a child, asks the lamb about its origins and who provided him with life, food, clothes, his “tender voice”. Then the Lamb answers his own questions: “He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb.” one who resembles in his gentleness both the child and the lamb. A lamb is a very meek and mild creature, which could be why Blake chose to use this animal to describe God's giving side. He even refers to God as being meek and mild in line fifteen: "He is meek, and he is mild." And then goes on and sends his blessings. In this poem, Blake wants to shows all the good things created by god. In ‘The Tyger’ Blake describes the tiger...
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...As an online William Blake fan, I receive at least one request per month from students asked to interpret William Blake's wonderful lyric, "The Tyger." The contrast with "The Lamb" is obvious. ("Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?" The answer is God, who became incarnate as Jesus the Lamb.) "The Tyger" asks, "Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" And the answer is, "Yes, God made the Tyger too." To understand "The Tyger" fully, you need to know Blake's symbols. One of the central themes in his major works is that of the Creator as a blacksmith. This is both God the Creator (personified in Blake's myth as Los) and Blake himself (again with Los as his alter-ego.) Blake identified God's creative process with the work of an artist. And it is art that brings creation to its fulfillment -- by showing the world as it is, by sharpening perception, by giving form to ideas. Blake's story of creation differs from the Genesis account. The familiar world was created only after a cosmic catastrophe. When the life of the spirit was reduced to a sea of atoms, the Creator set a limit below which it could not deteriorate farther, and began creating the world of nature. The longer books that Blake wrote describe Los's creation of animals and people within the world of nature. One particularly powerful passage in "Milton" describes Los's family weaving the bodies of each unborn child. In believing that creation followed a cosmic catastrophe and a fall of spiritual...
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...Jeremy Knight Mrs. Holmes English 12C 12 April 2011 “The Tyger” William Blake had a unique way of writing poems, especially in one of his most famous works, “The Tyger.” His life as a writer, themes, literary techniques, and writing style are all what make “The Tyger” so successful. Born in London on November 28, 1757, William Blake was an English writer, poet, and illustrator during the Romantic period. Blake was the second of five children born to James Blake, a hosier, and Catherine. As a child it was said that Blake would have unusual visions of spirits. Blake began seeing these visions at the age of eight (“Overview”). Blake had no formal education, being home schooled until the age of ten. Blake learned to read and write at home. When Blake was ten, he was sent to Henry Par’s drawing school to study art. Later Blake was apprenticed to an engraver, James Basire. During his apprenticeship, Blake was sent to Westminster Abbey where he drew monuments for Basire (“Overview”). According to, “Overview of William Blake,” “the Gothic atmosphere of the church influenced Blake’s imagination and his artistic style.” Blake then began writing poetry. After leaving his apprenticeship in 1779, Blake enrolled at the Royal Academy just before starting his life as an engraver (“Overview”). On August 18, 1782, Blake married Catherine Boucher. Blake taught her to read, write, and make prints of his engravings. Blake was introduced to Harriet Mathew, who encouraged Blake to have some...
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...The Tyger "The Tiger," written by William Blake initially called "The Tyger,” published in 1794 in an accumulation titled ‘Songs of Experience’; is a verse sonnet describing the way of God and His manifestations. Advanced compilations frequently print "The Tiger" along with an earlier Blake sonnet, "The Lamb," written in 1789 in a collection titled ‘Songs of Innocence’. Born in 1757 in London, William Blake started written work at an early age and asserted to have had his first vision, of a tree brimming with angels, at age 10. He concentrated on etching and developed to love Gothic art, which he consolidated into his own remarkable works. Considered frantic by his fellow mates for his quirky perspectives, Blake held in high respect by experts for his expressiveness and innovativeness, and for the philosophical and otherworldly undercurrents inside his works (Osbert, 77). His artistic creations and verse portrays as a feature of the Romantic age. Neglected in life, William Blake has since turned into a goliath in the field of poetry and art, and his visionary way to deal with the same just brought forth innumerable, enchanted hypotheses about him. A misjudged writer, artisan, and visionary during his life, he gained the fame mostly in the later part of his life (Bentley, 147). "The Tyger" is a lyric comprised of a series of inquiries. There are no fewer than thirteen questions and stand out full sentence that finishes with a period rather than a question mark. Addressing...
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... The Tyger, written by British poet, William Blake he chooses Tyger versus Lamb to develop a sense of strength versus frailty. How these two animals, who are the complete opposite of each other, could possibly have been made by the same creator. William Blake does this by using imagery, symbolism and repetition in this poem. By looking deeper into this poem, I will emphasize these points and provide evidence to support these ideas. By seeing the Tyger as big and ferocious and the Lamb as small and innocent the perception of opposition is created. Blake refers to the Tyger as a fearsome beast by writing “Tyger! Tyger! burning bright in the forests night,” as well as “In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes?” The color contrast of the Tyger and its eyes that shine in the night reflect the image of fiery and strong. Further in the poem the lamb makes an appearance when Blake writes, “Did he who made the lamb make thee?” asking the reader to consider that the same creator made both creatures. “When the stars threw down their spears and watered heaven with their tears,” reveals that the lamb was made of another element, water. The speaker then refers to fire once again when additionally in the poem, Blake describes how the Tyger is created. Using the image of a Blacksmith to portray the creator by using such words as “hammer”, “chain”, and “anvil” to give readers this illusion. Another form William Blake uses is symbolism. The symbol of the Tyger is one...
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...overlooked, yet so simple and innocent is the sound (Munson 5). In Blake’s poem “The Lamb” he writes of a lamb, who is so gentle and tender, and brings peace to the speaker of the poem. Christianity is present in line 14 when the speaker tis the lamb that the one who made him is also a lamb (Smith 146). The lamb is described to be innocent, and is to represent the Lamb of God. Christ was often referred to as the Lamb of Peace, the Lord’s Shepherd, and Prince of Peace. The lamb is known to be a symbol of peace. In line three of the poem, the speaker says that the lamb’s creator instructs it to feed in the meadows. This is a representation of The Last Supper, when Jesus instructed the disciples to eat the bread as a symbol of His body (147). In Songs of Experience, Blake writes of reality of the world, and the dangers it unfolds. He wrote The Tyger, which is a companion to The Lamb. This tiger is portrayed to be evil and vicious. “There can be no two animals more different; one is known for its meekness, the other for its ferocity” (144). Blake believed that there are two contrary states of the human soul. He saw no division between good and evil, and...
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...Testament, there is a God a vengeance and power. In the New Testament, God is merciful and full of love. Poets, such as William Blake, Countee Cullen, and Robert Frost have commented on this duality, inscribing their own beliefs onto paper. William Blake shows the contrast in God’s creations through two poems, The Lamb and The Tyger. The Lamb opens with a question: “Little Lamb, who made thee?” The speaker questions the lamb on how it was made, how it obtained its “clothing” of wool and its “tender voice.” In the next stanza, the speaker answers his own question: the lamb’s maker “calls himself a Lamb” and who resembles both the lamb and the speaker, a child. While the child’s question is an innocent one, it resounds as the constant philosophical question of creation that religion tries to explain. In the first stanza where the child poses the question, he approaches a literal lamb that by no means can answer. But by answering his own question, the child expresses a bold and joyful confidence in Jesus Christ as his creator. The lamb is a traditional metaphor for Jesus Christ, portraying values of meekness, peace, and love. The comparison given of Jesus, the lamb, and the child show a love and companionship found throughout the...
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...questions, all of which refine this first one. From what part of the cosmos could the tiger’s fiery eyes have come, and who would have dared to handle that fire? What sort of physical presence, and what kind of dark craftsmanship, would have been required to “twist the sinews” of the tiger’s heart? The speaker wonders how, once that horrible heart “began to beat,” its creator would have had the courage to continue the job. Comparing the creator to a blacksmith, he ponders about the anvil and the furnace that the project would have required and the smith who could have wielded them. 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 poem begins with the speaker asking a fearsome tiger what kind of divine being could have created it: “What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame they fearful symmetry?” Each subsequent stanza contains further questions, all of which refine this first one. From what part of the cosmos could the tiger’s fiery eyes have come, and who would have dared to handle that fire? What sort of physical presence, and what kind of dark craftsmanship, would have been required to “twist the sinews” of the tiger’s heart? The speaker wonders how, once that horrible heart “began to beat,” its creator would have had the courage to continue the job. Comparing the creator to a blacksmith, he ponders about the anvil and the furnace that the project would have...
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...William Blake “the Tyger” "The Tyger In this counterpart poem to “The Lamb” in Songs of Innocence Blake offers another view of God through His creation. Whereas the lamb implied God's tenderness and mercy, the tiger suggests His ferocity and power. In the poem ‘The Tyger” by William Blake written in 1794 William Blake utilizes quatrains in a fairytale like structure to highlight the triumphant human awareness in this hymn of purity. Blake lived a very religious life “The Blakes were dissenters and believed to have belonged to the Moravian Church.” I believe this influenced blakes life because the tiger in the poem “The Tyger” symbolizes how soft and cute it is, then tells it that God made it and how wonderful that is. This also influenced blake to question religion, politics, poetry itself, history, science, and philosophy. Even today “The Tyger” is read today “elementary students read it because it rhymes and it talks about tiger and high school students read it because of the difficulty”. The poem is very helpful and inspirational for both students and adults. “The tyger” was published with a series of poems called the “songs of experience” in 1794. Blake wrote these poems during the radical period which was a time of passion and imagination. The passion and imagination were the things that influenced blake to write. William blake uses alliteration in the poem “ Tyger Tyger burning bright” he uses it with the t’s and the b’s. The poem consists of six...
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...begin to analyze his individual poems. In 1789, William Blake published “The Lamb” from “The Songs of Innocence”, which uses both symbolism and questioning to solve the riddle of the creation of human life. The speaker, a curious child, inquires with a talking lamb, "Little Lamb who made thee/Dost thou know who made thee /Gave thee life & bid thee feed" ("The Lamb" 1-3). The child is asking the lamb who put it on Earth, and who created it with its liveliness and humanism. The child is simply asking the question and it has yet to be answered; the question is dual sided since the question is such a simple, childish one, yet it has depth into the eternal, complex mystery of human existence. The lamb responds to the child by saying, “Little Lamb I’ll tell thee/He is called by thy name” (12-13). When the lamb says, "He is called by thy name", “He” refers to Jesus, since he is biblically called the lamb and is portrayed through the innocence of children, and thus explains that Jesus/God is the maker of life. By symbolizing Jesus, Blake strongly emphasizes the values of Christianity and accredits God for the creation of mankind. Since Romanticism is characterized by the rejection of science and a focus on sublimity and natural aestheticism, Blake looks to religion, a less realist source, for answers rather than the scientific explanations brought about during the Enlightenment. In 1794, Blake published “The Tyger” in The Songs of Experience, and again uses questioning and symbolism to...
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...“The Tyger” by William Blake is a lyric poem that depicts the nature of the creator and his creations. The poem is more about the creator of the tyger than it is about the tyger. In contemplating the terrible ferocity and awe-inspiring symmetry of the tyger, the speaker is at a loss to explain how the same God who made the meek, innocent lamb could create a horrifying creature such as the tyger. This essay will provide a detailed analysis of William Blake’s “The Tyger” paying particular attention, firstly to the extended metaphor in stanza’s 2, 3 and 4, secondly, to the poetic significance of repetition, in particular to the phrase “fearful symmetry”, thirdly, to the role that the rhythm and metre play in creating an urgent need to address the succession of the questions and lastly, the evocation of the sublime emotion of terror in Blake’s depiction of the Tyger. Firstly, the extended metaphor in stanza’s 2, 3 and 4, is comparing the creator and his creation of the Tyger to a blacksmith and his creations. A blacksmith that makes use of tools, such as the “Hammer,” “chain,” ”furnace,” and “anvil” in creating objects out of hot metal. The blacksmith represents a conventional image of artistic creation; here Blake applies it to the divine creation of the natural world. This is evident in L5:”In what distant deeps or skies”, refers to an otherworldly (“distant”) place, perhaps a kind of hell (“deeps”) or Heaven (“skies”). The “distant deeps or skies” bring to mind the concept...
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...The Tyger: a religious poem? William Blake published his poem ‘The Tyger’ in 1794 as a part of his collection Songs of experience. It is Blake’s best-known poem. William Blake was one of the first writers of Romanticism. He showed faith in imagination. What is very striking and what you notice instantly, is the spelling of the word tiger. He used an y instead of an i. Though in the past, tiger was usually spelled with an y, but in Blake’s time, people started to write it more often with an i. This makes the title itself already put you to thinking why Blake specifically chose for this spelling. It makes you wonder, is the poem about a tiger at all? Or is it only used as metaphor? But these things aren’t unusual for Blake’s poems. Playing with punctuation and spelling identify him. In this essay I’ll discuss the following question: is The Tyger by William Blake a religious poem? In my opinion, it isn’t at all. In the poem there are used a lot of metaphores and paradoxes. Sentences like ‘burning bright’ and ‘burning fire in thine eyes’ do not refer to burning or fire itself at all, they are just describing the beauty and bright colors of the tiger’s fur and eyes. Such metaphors are not hard to understand and will be recognized immediately, which makes it fun to read. Another example is the title itself. Tyger should be written as tiger of course, but in this poem, he doesn’t mean to discuss the tiger on its own. In this poem William asks himself questions about the Creation...
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...tools were used to make the tiger? hammers or chains? Did the creator smile at the creation of the tiger? The last stanza repeats the first question, in asking, overall, who made the tiger? (“The Tyger). Simply reading “The Tyger,” lacks the depth needed to receive the full effect of the words written. One needs to dig deeper, in order to discover the gems hidden deep within William Blake’s words. For example, the tiger, the lamb and the various tools all symbolize something different. “Blake’s tiger becomes the symbolic center for an investigation into the presence of evil in the world” (“Songs of Innocence and Experience”). By inferring that the tiger's versatile personality symbolized the evil present in the world, Blake indicated that the God that created everything still technically created the evil as well. The “Lamb” in line 20 represents Jesus Christ indicates that the same person who created Jesus also created the tiger (“The Tyger”). Building on the tiger symbolism, Blake is questioning the creator on how he could create something so beautiful, such as the lamb and the tiger, but still allow the tiger to possess a vengeance within. Furthermore, the mention of the lamb is also an allusion to Christianity (“Songs of Innocence and Experience”). Throughout history the symbol of a lamb has always represented God’s son, Jesus Christ, as something pure and a sacrifice who...
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...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. The poem is a child’s song, in the form of a question and answer. The first stanza is rural and descriptive, while the second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains explanation and analogy. The child’s question is both naive and profound. The question (“who made thee?”) is a simple one, and yet the child is also tapping into the deep and timeless questions that all human beings have, about their own origins and the nature of creation. Yet by answering his own question, the child converts it into a rhetorical one, thus counteracting the initial spontaneous sense of the poem. The answer is presented as a puzzle or riddle, and even though it is an easy one child’s play, this also contributes to an underlying sense of ironic knowingness in the poem. The child’s answer, however, reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and his innocent acceptance of its teachings. The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb underscores...
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...Like a Child ENGL 102: Literature and Composition APA 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, lamb, and Jesus Christ. “The Lamb” is made up of two stanzas; the first stanza asking an array of questions, and the second answering the questions. The first stanza is composed of five rhyming couplets such as “feed/mead “and “delight/bright”, and the second stanza only has one, “mild/child”. Repetition is present in the very first and very last couplet of each stanza making these lines into a refrain, and giving the poem its song-like quality which produces a nursery rhyme of AABB. This gives the poem an innocent, child-like view point and connotes purity. Blake uses "thee" four times in his rhyming scheme, and he keeps to single syllables. Blake uses grammatical vocabulary instead of slang, and his choice of words, such as stream, delight...
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