William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was born in 1757 in London. This city influences most of

his work. For example, the depressing poem ‘London’. As Blake grew up

it became harder and more painful for him to act like normal people,

he hung around with a selection of rebels and reformers and he

considered every form of oppression as an act of evil. He got into

trouble with the law for saying, “Damn the King and damn all his

subjects!” (From a biography of Blake). Blake was also influenced by

the religion Buddhism in the verse:

‘He who bends to himself a Joy

Doth the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the Joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.’

One of Blake’s favoured poems is ‘The Tiger’ of the ‘Songs of

Experience’. The well-remembered lines are, ‘Tyger! Tyger! Burning

bright; in the forests of the night’. Blake is comparing the creature,

the tiger, to the Devil; he mentions fire a lot and also a furnace and

anvil, hammer and chain, like in a blacksmith’s it is as hot as Hell.

He also questions whether the Lord, who made something so tame and

sweet as the Lamb, could ever have created the Tiger, or was it Satan?

‘Did he who made the lamb make thee?’. The final verse is the same as

the first verse except for one word. He replaces ‘could’ with ‘dare’.

It’s no longer ‘Who could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ but now you

would have to ‘dare’ rather than be able to.

‘The Lamb’ is a song of innocence. In theory it is completely opposite

to ‘The Tiger’. It is really sweet and innocent. In the first verse he

is asking the lamb if he knew who made it and in the second verse he

is telling it that it was God, ‘For He calls himself a Lamb’. The

entire poem is informing the lamb where he came from in the eyes of an

innocent little boy.

As I mentioned before, ‘The Tiger’ is completely opposite to ‘the

Lamb’. One is a ‘Song of Innocence’ and one is a ‘Song of Experience’.

In ‘The Lamb’, Blake talks about how God and the lamb have so much in

common, ‘we are called by His name’, and in ‘The Tiger’, he talks

about how God and the tiger have so little in common, ‘Did he smile

his work to see? Did he who make the Lamb make thee?’. He talks about

how God and the heavens are ashamed of the creation of the tiger:

‘When the stars threw down their spears; and watered heaven with their