The Lamb is a poem that is a part of William Blake’s collection of lyrical works named Songs of Innocence and Experience. The work juxtaposes the concepts of ever-fleeting innocence and the harsh reality that comes with experience and, hence, makes use of such literary devices as antithesis pairing certain poems in the collection like The Lamb and The Tyger (Mambrol). This paper will express my opinion about the work and analyze the particular use of figurative poetic language in the poem.
To begin with, I particularly liked The Lamb due to the poem’s seeming simplicity and several layers of hidden meaning. The poem narrates an innocent child talking to a lamb and wondering if it knows who has created it, obviously referring to divine providence. Blake reinforces this idea by use of repetition of phrases such as “Little Lamb, who made thee?” (1), “Dost thou know who made thee?” (2), “Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee” (11) and “Little Lamb, God bless thee!” (19). Furthermore, Blake essentially makes a statement about the childlike innocence of Jesus Christ by using allegory and mentioning that the maker of the lamb “calls Himself a Lamb” (14) and “became a little child” (16). In this passage, the author references how Christ is often referred to as the Lamb of God as well as the fact that he was born to the Virgin Mary and, thus, is akin to a child. Finally, Blake implies that both the child and the lamb should be thankful to Christ for their creation and the creation of the world that surrounds them.
In conclusion, despite the author’s minimalistic approach to his lyrics, William Blake can achieve an exceptional level of artistic expressiveness in his work owing to multiple uses of repetition and allegories. These literary devices allow him to express his opinion on the concepts of religion, innocence, and the meaning of life. Although I do not completely share the author’s worldview, I was, nevertheless, touched by Blake’s devotion to his ideals and by the beauty of the poem’s structure and rhythm.
Works Cited
Blake, William. “The Lamb.” The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Edited by David E. Erdman, Anchor Books, 1988.
Mambrol, Nasrullah. “Analysis of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.”Literary Theory and Criticism, 2021.