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

Songs of pureness and Experience   In William Blakes Songs of Innocence and Experience, the gentle lamb and the dreadful tiger define childhood by setting a limit between the innocence of youth and the experience of age. The Lamb is written with childlike repetitions and a selection of words which could satisfy any audience nether the age of five. Blake applies the lamb in representation of youthful immaculateness. The Tyger is hard-featured in affinity 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 hand could the same creator catch 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. " subaltern Lamb who made thee/ Dost thou know who made thee (Blake 1-2)." The Lambs introductory lines set the style 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(prenominal) a docile creature with "clothing of delight (Blake 6)." There atomic number 18 images of the lamb frolicking in divine meadows and babbling brooks. The stanza closes with the same inquiry which it began with. The game stanza begins with the author claiming to know the lambs creator, and he proclaims that he provide tell him. Blake then states that the lambs creator is none various then the lamb itself. Jesus Christ is often described as a lamb, and Blake uses lines such as "he is meek and he is easy (Blake 15)" to accomplish this. Blake then makes it clear that the poems point of regard 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, simple conception of creation, and love of all things ce lestial. The Lambs nearly frosty opposite is The Tyger. Its the difference between a feel-good minister cover warm and fuzzy for Jesus, and a fiery evangelist preaching a hellfire sermon. Instead of the innocent lamb we now have the appalling 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.