William Blake composes two beautiful pieces of work that exemplify his ideas on the nature of creation. The two pieces, The Lamb and The Tyger, are completely opposite views, which give questionable doubt about most people’s outlook of creation. ‘The Tyger’ concentrates on the dangers to be faced in life and nature while ‘The Lamb’ celebrates nature as seen through the innocent eyes of a child. Blake examines different, almost opposite or contradictory ideas about the natural world, its creatures and their Creator.
Blake uses rhyme, repetition and imagery to enhance these ideas, the poems are displayed like nursery rhymes, In the Tyger, Blake inserts several immeral tetrameter lines, which makes every end syllable seem to be stressed this shows us that that the poem represents the power of a tiger. The Lamb gives a childlike atmosphere to the poem, its uses simple language and that there is repetition on lines back to back manner of the work nursery rhyme feel but with a deeper meaning then what is meant for children.
The lamb represents the sense of innocence and naivety. Blake believes that god created us and that he blesses everyone no matter if their good nor bad, Blake displays a side of creation that is ingenious and pure. The phrases. “Little lamb, God bless thee” and “He is meek, and he is mild” show this idea. The poem is written in a somewhat a response sort of concept, the poem is written in a didactic method. As for the tiger the central idea stays the same, but the whole perception is changed around.
The Essay on William Blake Poems Echoing Green
William Blake wrote many poems during his lifetime. He had a set of poems called The Songs of Innocence and also a set called The songs of Experience. This paper is focusing on five poems from the Songs of Innocence, which are: "The Shepherd,"The Echoing Green," The Little Black Boy,"The Blossom," and "Laughing Song."The Shepherd" is a very short two stanza poem in which Blake tells about a ...
Blake is building on the conventional idea that nature, is like a work of art, the tiger initially appears as a striking image, but as the poem goes on it turns into a symbolic character. The poem begins asking a fearsome tiger what type of being could of created it. “What immortal hand or eye” “Could frame they fearful symmetry”. Each stanza contains more questions, which are all similar to the first. “ Twist the sinews” what kind of being would be required to this to a Tyger’s heart. “ And when thy heart began to beat” “What dread hand?
What dread feet” this is saying what being would have the courage to finish the job. How would this feel and would this be the same being as who created the lamb? The Tyger is the darker side of creation where there is less joys involved, Blake only displays the horrors of the world in this poem to separate it almost completely from the Lamb. The purity and simplicity that was displayed in the Lamb is not shown in the Tyger. Blake’s use of imagery in the Tyger is used in words such as “fire”,
“hammer”, “furnace”, “chain”, “anvil”, and “spears” and the use of austere action words such as, “burnt”, “seize”, “twist”, “beat”, “grasp”, “clasp”, and “threw” creates specific relentless connotations. But with the lamb the images used is given in more calm and gentle ways as you can see from the words “life”, “feed”, “stream”, “delight”, “softest”, “delight”, “tender”, “rejoice”, “mild”, “meek”, “child” and “bless”. These word’s create a specific image of peace and tranquillity.
Through Blake’s use of repetition, he carries out a general theme of the positive in life eternally countered by a negative. The good versus evil premise is shown through repetitive questioning by comparing the Tyger’s evil personality to that of the innocent Lamb. However, the repetition most successfully adds a sense of darkness and suspense to the piece. The suspense of learning the answers to the contrasting questions and the increasingly dark imagery intensifies the experience for readers.
