The Lamb and The Tiger by William Blake Essay -- Poet Poems William Bl

'The Lamb' and 'The Tiger' by William Blake Write about The Lamb and The Tiger by William Blake. Explain how the poet portrays these creatures and comment on what you consider to be the main ideas and attitudes of the poet. 'All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, The Lord God made them all.' Cecil Frances Alexander Indeed, God created all creatures great and small, and he could not have created two creatures more different from each other than the lamb and the tiger. The question arises in one's mind therefore: - 'Could one creator design and give life to two exhibits of such a vast contrast?' ====================================================================== William Blake certainly poses this question in a somewhat clever manner in the two examples of his work that I've analysed and compared, namely 'The Lamb' and 'The Tiger'. In the two collections of his work, namely Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, he has several contrasting poems that bring the two states of being described by both collections under the microscope. As one of the early Romance poets, Blake was writing in opposition to the rapidly changing, revolutionary eighteenth-century. Essentially, that opposition developed into an appreciation of the emotions, as opposed to reason ant intellect, and a recognition of the purity and innocence which childhood represents in contrast with the corruptions and in-authenticity of adulthood, with its learning and experience of life. The English Industrial Revolution played a very influential role in William Blake's work. Songs of Innocence includes a reversal of the expected 'hierarchies'. The poems reject t... ...ecessary self-knowledge. The Lamb develops into the Tiger - innocence is the price that must me paid to attain an identity in 'grown-up land'. It has to sacrifice its meek, mild, gentile innocence to become the Tiger of Experience prowling the 'dark forests' of life. In conclusion, I feel William Blake is attempting to transmit an important message: never mind how innocent we are during our naÃÆ'Â ¯ve, happy playground days, the big bad world is awaiting us all, and we have to stop resisting and accept that we're all going to develop into Tigers at some point - gaining our own unique symmetry in place of our soft, delightful, tender selves. Life past, present and future poses many questions - it's up to us to answer them, to discover our true identities, and to decide where exactly our faith lies. Innocence is the foundation upon which experience is built.