“The Lamb” by William Blake, pg 120
In William Blake 's Songs of Innocence and Experience, the fierce tiger and the gentle lamb define childhood by setting a contrast between the two very different states of the human soul. “The Lamb” is written in a way that would be suitable for a very young audience. “The Lamb” is one of the simplest poems that William Blake wrote. The symbolic meaning of innocence can easily be found throughout the poem. “The Lamb” starts with an innocent directness and a natural world with no visible signs of adults. William Blake addresses the lamb itself, saying it is pure, innocent and it is associated with Christ. William Blake describes the lamb exactly as he sees it. The lamb has been blessed with soft and warm
SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 01 Oct. 2014.
This association emphasizes her Christ-like nature – like Jesus, she is a "lamb of God," an innocent being sacrificed. The three-fold association of children, lambs, and Christ was immediate and obvious in 19th century culture – as in William Blake’s poem "The Lamb."
Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and jealousy Satan wants humans to feel to lure them to Hell. The poems of experience reflect those feelings. This is illustrated by comparing and contrasting A Divine Image to a portion of The Divine Image.
From childhood he was unlike those around him. He went to school to study art and found his love of poetry. From his early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions. He spoke of seeing God and the Angels. He married his with Catherine Boucher in 1782. His brother, Robert died, but this is where Blake got a lot of inspiration for his work. In 1789 Blake wrote and illustrated the popular Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in 1794. His poetry was extremely non-conformist and focused on imagination, rather than reason. Both works have many common parallels and themes. His poetry also deals with the common aspect of a romanticism work; it has moments of sin, suffering and salvation. In Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper, it is a heartbreaking poem about the young children that were forced into doing labor as chimneysweepers. Mostly because they were the only ones small enough to fit in the spaces and they were sold into that work. It was damaging and cruel how they treated these children and Blake writes about it in such a powerful way. In the first stanza alone the reader learns about the difficult life and the suffering this child has had to overcome, “When my mother died when I was young, my father sold me while yet my tongue…so, your Chimney’s I sweep and in soot I sleep.” (Songs of Innocence) This poor child is portrayed so innocently and gentle, yet leads this suffering unfortunate life. People treated
Hilton, Nelson. "William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience" in The Blackwell Companion to Romanticism. Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. Online. Internet. 25 February 2000. Available http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake/SONGS/begin/songs.html
The poem “Black Lamb” is about a person who has experienced the horrible reality of being raped. It creates a person who is extremely dissatisfied with herself. She feels that everyone thinks she is different or bad. Her life has been turned completely around in such a short time. Trying to live a normal life has been destroyed by an evil act she had no control over.
The poem opens with an introduction of the speaker: “When my mother died I was very young, / And my father sold me while yet my tongue / Could scarcely cry ’weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” (ll. 1-3). The speaker’s pathetic circumstance is stressed here, and he quickly wins the sympathy of the reader; Blake makes this possible by quickly relating some but doubtfully all the previous sorrow that the speaker has endured. First, his mother died when he, and perhaps she, too, was quite young, a common occurrence in Industrial Age England, given the dismal shape of the inner city, which was host to such problems as over-crowding, poor hygienic practices and sub-par means of sanitation—all of which ultimately led to the deaths of thousands. Second, his father apparently sold him, or, more likely, forced him to work to supplement the family’s income. Child Labor laws had yet to be enacted in England in 1789, s...
In 1794 William Blake published the poem Infant sorrow. In lines one through four of the poem Williams’s mother groans in sadness and his father weeps in agony. William Blake states the hardships of the dangerous world he was born into (3-1). He was helpless, naked, and crying loud. In lines five through eight Blake begins to struggle in his fathers arms, he is trying to free hiself and get away but no matter how hard he tries he can’t get away. He just gives up and sulks against his mother’s chest (3-2).
In Blake’s work “The Lamb,” he shows innocence through sheep and their nature. Blake describes sheep’s nature by saying that they “Feed/By the stream & o'er the mead/ have thee clothing of delight/ Softest clothing, wooly, bright” (Blake 4-6). This passage shows that sheep are providers to man and do no harm. Blake says that sheep have a “tender voice/ making all the vales rejoice?” (Blake 7-8).
One of Blake’s most famous works is The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Expe...
In William Blake’s poems, “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” and “Infant Sorrows,” there is something very blatantly wrong with society. William Blake wrote all of these poems to change society. We’ve seen this when studying many other authors. A very common way to make a change in society is to write poems or stories that make people feel sympathy for the ones who are being oppressed or mistreated. Some do it through satire. Others, like Blake, just write simple poems which clearly criticize society. William Blake saw problems in his society, and used his skills, as a writer, to influence the way people looked at society.
Gillham, D.G. Blake's contrary States: The 'Songs of Innocence and of Experience' as Dramatic Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
Infant Sorrow by William Blake is about the birth of a child into a dangerous world. The meaning behind this poem is that when a baby is born, they are entering a place that is unfamiliar to them and is full of hazardous circumstances and then seeks for safety and comfort by sulking on the mother's breast. Instead of blatantly telling the reader, Blake uses several poetic devices to deliver the meaning of Infant Sorrow. Some of the devices he uses are images, sound, figurative language, and the structure to bring out the meaning of his poem.
In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake differentiates between being experienced and being innocent. In the poem "Spring," the speaker focuses on the coming of spring and the excitement surrounding it which is emphasized by the trochaic meter of the poem. Everyone, including the animals and children, is joyful and getting ready for the new season, a season of rebirth and a new arrival of nature’s gifts.
by different names and as a separate category, highlighting their. differences. The. Children to Blake are extremely important, especially in the context of poetry, indeed in "The Introduction to Songs of Innocence. He says that the poems are "for children to hear" and concentrates on a child's view of life. It is not possible to say that Blake's poetry excludes women and children as so many of his poems are.
In the William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the vision of children and adults are placed in opposition of one another. Blake portrays childhood as a time of optimism and positivity, of heightened connection with the natural world, and where joy is the overpowering emotion. This joyful nature is shown in Infant Joy, where the speaker, a newborn baby, states “’I happy am,/ Joy is my name.’” (Line 4-5) The speaker in this poem is portrayed as being immediately joyful, which represents Blake’s larger view of childhood as a state of joy that is untouched by humanity, and is untarnished by the experience of the real world. In contrast, Blake’s portrayal of adulthood is one of negativity and pessimism. Blake’s child saw the most cheerful aspects of the natural wo...