William Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experience :: Songs of Innocence and Experience Essays

Songs of Innocence and Experience   In William Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experience, the dispirited lamb and the dire tiger define childhood by setting a contrast between the innocence of youth and the experience of age. The Lamb is compose with childish repetitions and a selection of words which could satisfy any audience under the age of five. Blake applies the lamb in representation of youthful immaculateness. The Tyger is hard-featu fierce in semblance to The Lamb, in respect to word choice and representation. The Tyger is a poem in which the author makes many inquiries, almost chantlike in their reiterations. The question at delve could the same creator have made both the tiger and the lamb? For William Blake, the answer is a frightening one. The Romantic Periods affinity towards childhood is epitomized in the poetry of Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experience. "Little Lamb who made thee/ Dost thou know who made thee (Blake 1-2)." The Lambs introductor y lines set the way for what follows an innocent poem about a 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 which it began with. The second stanza begins with the author claiming to know the lambs creator, and he proclaims that he will tell him. Blake then states that the lambs creator is none different then the lamb itself. Jesus Christ is often depict 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 poems point of positioning is from that of a child, when he says "I a child and thou a lamb (Blake 17)." The poem is one of a childs curiosity, untainted belief of creation, and love of all things celestial. The Lambs nearly polar opposite is The Tyger. Its the difference between a feel-good minister waxing warm and wooly 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 Blakes words have turned from heavenly to hellish in the transition from lamb to tiger.