Comparing William Blake's The Tyger and The Lamb

Comparing William Blake's “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”

William Blake is referred to as many things, including poet, engraver,

painter and mystic, but he is probably most famous for his poetry.

Blake began writing the poems below in about 1790 whilst living in

Lambeth, London. His poetry has a wide range of styles but his most

famous poems are those from “Songs of Innocence” and Song of

Experience”. The two sets of poems are designed to show different

states or ways of seeing. They are Blake's way of representing the

different ways in which people actually experience the world. In

“Songs of Innocence” the language is simple and repetitive, the lines

are kept short and the rhymes are obvious. A childlike vision is

conveyed through Blake's clever use of voices with their varying

perspectives and questions. The poems reveal particular states of

being and ways of seeing which the author is not saying are the whole

truth. The poems have a joyful quality but they contain a subtle

awareness of sorrow. “Songs of Experience” contrasts strongly with the

softness of “Songs of Innocence”. These poems show how horrible and

cruel the world really is under the surface of what we see.

Blake has many themes represented in his poems from Song of Experience

and Songs of Innocence but they mainly centre on his childhood, the

aspects of rural and urban life, his protest against the horrible way

of life and a strong disliking to the way the Church was run. These

points will be discussed in the next poem analyses.

“The Tyger” and “The Lamb” are often 2 poems paired together and I think

that was Blakes intention, for example line 20 of “The Tyger” it says

“Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

So these will be the first t...

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...oem. There are many harsh

words such as “cold” used to describe the church as it is but when he

describes what he wants it to be the feeling of the poem becomes

warmer, like that of a poem in Song of Innocence.

From these poems I believed that what Blake means by “Innocence” is

that of a simple life where you don’t know about the troubles around

you and blissfully go along with life as it hits you.

And from this, “Experience” is what life is really life, it

concentrates on the negative sides of things and shows that there is

always an improvement to be made.

I personally find Blake's poems rather intriguing. At first when you look at

one of two poems it is hard to understand the ideas that blake puts

forward but after many poem analyses it becomes clear of the

difference between Innocence and Experience. Blake must have been a

very conscious man.