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What influence did Blake's interest in the old and new testament have on his songs or poems pdf
William blake poetry analysis
Relationship between the lamb and the tyger by Williams Blake
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William Blake was an English poet who was home schooled by his parents and found it difficult to socialize with other children which made him into a bit of an outcast as a child. His family was very religious, but they didn’t always agree with the church’s teachings. Because Blake didn’t have many friends and was schooled at home, he had a lot of time to reflect on life. There is a lot of biblical discourse in Blake’s work especially in his famous books Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Songs of Innocence has poems that speak of God in a redemptive sense like the teachings from the New Testament where as Songs of Experience are about the God who has created evil and brought suffering to the world. This essay is going to compare and contrast two poems, one from each book entitled The Lamb from the book Songs of Innocence and The Tyger from the book Songs of Experience. Both poems are examples of Anaphora, meaning one word or phrase will repeat throughout the poem lending weight and emphasis.
Blake’s The Lamb is short having only two stanzas. Each stanza contains five rhymed couplets with repetition in the beginning, middle and at the end of the poem. The poem starts with a question, “Little Lamb, who made thee? / Dost thou know who made thee?” (Lines 1-2). Here the speaker is clearly asking the lamb of its origins and then questions the lamb again, asking if he truly knows who his creator is. Blake then goes on to describe the gifts of life the lamb has been given from his creator beginning with life itself, food, clothing, a voice “Making all the vales rejoice!” (Line 8). The speaker then again questions the lamb in lines 9 and 10 repeating the same questions from lines 1 and 2.
In the second stanza, the speaker begi...
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...ed in the poem The Tyger and the poem The Lamb. Another contrast is the open awe of The Tyger and the easy confidence of The Lamb. The predator is the tyger and its prey is the lamb. The tyger brings power, darkness and danger, but the lamb brings light and goodness. The tyger is the adult who has experience and the lamb is the child who knows nothing but innocence. The tyger and the lamb are not only opposites, but they create a paradox in the speakers mind.
Unlike The Lamb, where in the poem there are seven questions and answers, The Tyger is fifteen unanswered questions. Many people find themselves asking themselves unanswerable questions and questions that contain answers about life, nature, God and the universe. Blake is attempting to authenticate the complexity of the creatures of our world that there is a creator God and that we are not here by accident.
A name is given in the second stanza “Tom Dacre” used to show the realism of the event described in the poem. The second stanza contains the only simile in this poem, “That curl’d like a lamb’s back”(6), symbolizing the lamb as innocence and when they shave the child’s head it’s like they are taking the innocence away from the child.
In Blake’s poem “The Lamb” from Songs of Innocence, Blake proves that in order to keep innocence alive, a child must not question. It is in a child’s nature to trust all that has been told. Therefore the lamb represents childhood as well as innocence. The lamb is personified as being a gentle creature without sin, and the poem itself is characterized by pleasant light imagery. This imagery is an indicator that innocence is a desired state of being. In the first stanza of the poem, the narrator asks questions regarding
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).
In the poem, "The Lamb," from Songs of Innocence, William Blake asks the little lamb, "Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?" (1351). It is here where the author purposely questions the reader and leaves the reader, wandering for an answer to that precise question. The author then continues by leading the reader to an indirect possible answer to his question by saying "Little Lamb I'll tell thee! / He is called by thy name, / For he calls himself a Lamb" and proceeds a line later with "He became a little child; / I a child & thou a lamb." It is apparent that he doesn't exactly give a direct answer. He mentions in an roundabout way that the lamb's creator calls himself a Lamb and that he became a little child. This vague background provides an idea who the creator actually is, but not enough to somehow match the creator with God from the biblical texts. And, since the information is vague, the reader really can't come to a narrowed conclusion because the answer itself depends on the reader's beliefs and experiences and so therefore leaves the true answer to the question still unanswered.
The ideas that are presented in poems are often the same ideas everyone is thinking but are too afraid to speak their mind for fear that they might be judged. Allen Ginsberg explained this predicament when he said “[p]oetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private” (Ginsberg). This quote applies especially to “The Tyger” by William Blake. William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” at the surface is very simplistic; however, with further analysis the story’s theme of religion asks fundamental questions that pertain to one’s worldview with the use of symbolism.
Blake also uses sound to deliver the meaning to the poem. The poem starts off with "My mother groaned! my father wept." You can hear the sounds that the parents make when their child has entered this world. Instead of joyful sounds like cheer or cries of joy, Blake chooses words that give a meaning that it is not such a good thing that this baby was brought into this world. The mother may groan because of the pain of delivery, but she also groans because she knows about horrible things in this world that the child will have to go through. The father also weeps for the same reason, he knows that the child is no longer in the safety of the womb, but now is in the world to face many trials and tribulations.
...gle and simple interpretation of the poem makes it a responsive target for repeated critical thinking, interpretation, and re-reading. “The Tyger” is an approachable but uncatchable piece of art.
William Blake’s 1793 poem “The Tyger” has many interpretations, but its main purpose is to question God as a creator. Its poetic techniques generate a vivid picture that encourages the reader to see the Tyger as a horrifying and terrible being. The speaker addresses the question of whether or not the same God who made the lamb, a gentle creature, could have also formed the Tyger and all its darkness. This issue is addressed through many poetic devices including rhyme, repetition, allusion, and symbolism, all of which show up throughout the poem and are combined to create a strong image of the Tyger and a less than thorough interpretation of its maker.
Similar to common nursery rhymes, Blake uses musical devices in both “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” which brings an awareness of potential evil and how it dominates over innocence by exercising specific language in both related poems. For example, Blake uses alliteration in “The Lamb” by repeating “Little Lamb” several times during the poem to grasp the reader’s attention. Along with alliteration, Blake’s “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” both capture the reader’s attention by using rhyme scheme. For example, Blake’s use of couplets in both of the related poems potentially brings an awareness of how evil dominates over innocence. Blake utilizes the couplet series in his poem “The Tyger” and proves his theme by comparing and contrasting the tyger and the lamb and even bravely asks if the same Creator who created the innocent little lamb also created the potentially evil tyger
Blake is saying to the lamb, I'll tell you who made you, and it is
The idea of intentional flaws may be perplexing at first, but Blake is subconsciously mimicking and following the mold that God has created. Innocence and evil, good and bad exists in many aspects. From the imperfect symmetry of the poem’s form to the incongruent harmony between the poem and the illustration, they all emphasize the idea that good and evil exist simultaneously. It is only with an imperfect world is one able to gather knowledge, make mistakes, and gain experience. It all comes full circle when looking back at the collection, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, that the poem The Tyger is derived from. Without both evil and good, the author would not have had the ability to identify with experience, and the poem The Tyger would not be the
giving the tiger an even more awe-inspiring quality. The stanza finishes with "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" Which gives the idea of disbelief at the prospect of a creator making a harmless pleasant creature such as the lamb and a dangerous mighty and awful creature like the tiger. b) Explore the ways Blake uses imagery and repetition in this poem. The most obvious repetition in this poem is the "Tiger"!
The Song of Innocence and Experience is a collection of poems written by William Blake. “Innocence” and “Experience” are two definitions of consciousness that rethink John Milton’s existential-mythic states of “Paradise” and the “Fall”, this coincides with the romantic notion that adolescence is a state of protected innocence instead of original sin and yet is still not immune to the fallen world and its institutions.
The poem at first glance looks to be about a Tyger but after reading through
" The poem is enveloped in a sea of naivety as well as humor as the speaker is. directly speaking with an animal seeking profound philosophical clarification concerning similar questions that all humans have. contemplated at one point in their life and have been unable to answer. I will be able to answer. The child's question: "Who made thee," is relatively simple.