Introduction
William Blake, a native of London, is one of the significant figures in poetry and the fine arts of the Romantic era. His literature is refined and full of meaning: he grew from rebelliousness and a spirit of rebellion into a creator with ideas of forgiveness and self-sacrifice. Blake had a complicated relationship with Christianity: he demonstrated an aversion to it and its traditions in his later works. In the middle of his oeuvre, he created The Lamb, a short poem raising the theme of religion and innocence. William Blake argues that the Lamb is the source of righteousness, which is personified by the figure of Christ.
Main Themes and Symbolism
The Lamb was included in the collection Songs of Innocence, picking up on its major philosophical themes: innocence, caring, and responsibility. These are revealed in the literal situation of the poem: a young child marvels at the gentleness and tenderness of a lamb who does not know his maker. The child wonders, “dost thou know who made thee?” marveling at the innocence of the little creature (Blake, para. 2). He is amazed that the bleating of the Lamb makes people cheerful: he does not understand how nature created something unique and tries to find the answer. A woolly and bright blanket wraps the Lamb, and the boy would like to have something like that.
The poem is full of symbolic imagery, closely related to Blake’s perception of Christ. He fills the image of the Lamb with Christian details, “he is meek, and he is mild,” drawing attention to how tradition can be reflected in idyllic creatures (Blake, para. 15). The central figure is the little child: he is innocent and childlike, seeking questions. He innocently asks them, spontaneously struck by nature and the divine images in him. Even this child understands that all creatures share a common origin: he (God) gave them names and blessed them to live well.
The poem’s tone is calm, comforting, and gentle: the surprised child and the meek Lamb connect with nature. The child describes a perfectly measured life, and Blake emphasizes this with marker words: tender, mild, rejoice, and delight. The child is confident that the creator has blessed every creature’s life with the ability to ” bid thee feed // by the stream and o’er the mead” and live under the name of Christ (Blake, para. 4). All elements of the poem point to Blake’s mood about Christianity: he dislikes tradition, but he believes that every creature has been blessed in the beginning.
The Personality of the Narrator
It is worth designating the personality of the narrator, the little child who has met a creature as sincere as he is. The child is happy in every moment he shares with the lamb: both the meadow and the stream are pleasant. He sees joy in the sheen of the lamb’s gifted fur, in the breadth of the valleys, in the euphony of the animal’s gentle voice. The narrator’s personality is meek, mild, and naïve; Blake sees her as the Christ who must take responsibility for every creature. The child asks abstract questions typical of an early age, but they are correct: clergy always pay attention to children who have come innocently into the world. Nevertheless, Blake’s budding dislike of Christianity can also be seen: the child’s faith is blind and innocent. Self-assured Christian motives about Christ’s responsibility drown out common sense about how the world was created.
Literary Assessment
Blake uses several literary devices that indicate the poem’s mood and its relationship to Christian motifs. First of all, The Lamb is two short stanzas written in simple language with short syllables. In the first stanza, a child asks questions, trying to find answers from the lamb. Many questions are answered in the second part, and this form of dialogue is similar to atonement and confession in church. Second, Blake has divided the poem into introductory and central sections. In the opening passages, the poet uses lexical repetitions that indicate the poem’s ideological motives. These repetitions create a general mood, indicating the need to address philosophical issues continually. In the main parts, the author first draws attention to the world around him and where it came from.
Conclusion
Thus, The Lamb is a child’s personal dialogue with nature that surprises him. The poem’s overall tone is light, naïve, and childishly simple. It is filled with Christian motifs about the formation of the world and its original innocence. Blake uses repetition and the visual division of the poem to indicate the need to seek answers to philosophical questions about the origins of Christ.
Reference
Blake, W. (n.d.) The lamb. Poetry foundation.