1. a lamb or the lisping character of a does not provide a completely
child’s chant. adequate doctrine, because it fails to
account for the presence of suffering
The Lamb and evil in the world. The pendant (or
companion) poem to this one, found in
Little Lamb, who made thee? the Songs of Experience, is “The
The poem is a child’s song, in the form
Dost thou know who made thee? Tyger”; taken together, the two poems
of a question and answer. The first
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed, stanza is rural and descriptive, while give a perspective on religion that
By the stream and o'er the mead; the second focuses on abstract includes the good and clear as well as
Gave thee clothing of delight, spiritual matters and contains the terrible and inscrutable. These
Softest clothing, woolly, bright; explanation and analogy. The child’s poems complement each other to
Gave thee such a tender voice, question is both naive and profound. produce a fuller account than either
Making all the vales rejoice? The question (“who made thee?”) is a offers independently. They offer a
Little Lamb, who made thee? simple one, and yet the child is also good instance of how Blake himself
Dost thou know who made thee? tapping into the deep and timeless stands somewhere outside the
questions that all human beings have, perspectives of innocence and
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, about their own origins and the nature experience he projects.
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee. of creation. The poem’s apostrophic
He is called by thy name, form contributes to the effect of
For He calls Himself a Lamb. naiveté, since the situation of a child
He is meek, and He is mild; talking to an animal is a believable
He became a little child. one, and not simply a literary
I a child, and thou a lamb, contrivance. Yet by answering his own
We are called by His name. question, the child converts it into a
Little Lamb, God bless thee! rhetorical one, thus counteracting the
Little Lamb, God bless thee! initial spontaneous sense of the poem.
The answer is presented as a puzzle
or riddle, and even though it is an easy
The poem begins with the question,
one—child’s play—this also
“Little Lamb, who made thee?” The
contributes to an underlying sense of
speaker, a child, asks the lamb about
ironic knowingness or artifice in the
its origins: how it came into being, how
poem. The child’s answer, however,
it acquired its particular manner of
reveals his confidence in his simple
feeding, its “clothing” of wool, its
Christian faith and his innocent
“tender voice.” In the next stanza, the
acceptance of its teachings.
speaker attempts a riddling answer to
his own question: the lamb was made The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus.
by one who “calls himself a Lamb,” The traditional image of Jesus as a
one who resembles in his gentleness lamb underscores the Christian values
both the child and the lamb. The poem of gentleness, meekness, and peace.
ends with the child bestowing a The image of the child is also
blessing on the lamb. associated with Jesus: in the Gospel,
Jesus displays a special solicitude for
Form
children, and the Bible’s depiction of
“The Lamb” has two stanzas, each Jesus in his childhood shows him as
containing five rhymed couplets. guileless and vulnerable. These are
Repetition in the first and last couplet also the characteristics from which the
of each stanza makes these lines into child-speaker approaches the ideas of
a refrain, and helps to give the poem nature and of God. This poem, like
its song-like quality. The flowing l’s and many of the Songs of
soft vowel sounds contribute to this Innocence,accepts what Blake saw as
effect, and also suggest the bleating of the more positive aspects of
conventional Christian belief. But it

2. subsequent stanza contains further can at once contain both beauty and
questions, all of which refine this first horror?
one. From what part of the cosmos
The Tiger could the tiger’s fiery eyes have come,
The tiger initially appears as a
strikingly sensuous image. However,
and who would have dared to handle
as the poem progresses, it takes on a
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright that fire? What sort of physical
symbolic character, and comes to
In the forest of the night presence, and what kind of dark
embody the spiritual and moral
What immortal hand or eye craftsmanship, would have been
problem the poem explores: perfectly
Could frame thy fearful required to “twist the sinews” of the
beautiful and yet perfectly destructive,
symmetry? tiger’s heart? The speaker wonders
Blake’s tiger becomes the symbolic
how, once that horrible heart “began to
center for an investigation into the
In what distant deeps or skies beat,” its creator would have had the
presence of evil in the world. Since the
Burnt the fire of thine eyes? courage to continue the job.
tiger’s remarkable nature exists both in
On what wings dare he aspire? Comparing the creator to a blacksmith,
physical and moral terms, the
What the hand dare seize the he ponders about the anvil and the
speaker’s questions about its origin
fire? furnace that the project would have
must also encompass both physical
required and the smith who could have
and moral dimensions. The poem’s
And What shoulder, and what art, wielded them. And when the job was
series of questions repeatedly ask
done, the speaker wonders, how
Could twist the sinews of thy what sort of physical creative capacity
would the creator have felt? “Did he
heart? the “fearful symmetry” of the tiger
smile his work to see?” Could this
And when thy heart began to bespeaks; assumedly only a very
possibly be the same being who made
beat, strong and powerful being could be
the lamb?
What dread hand? and what capable of such a creation.
dread feet? The poem is comprised of six
The smithy represents a traditional
quatrains in rhymed couplets. The
What the hammer? what the image of artistic creation; here Blake
meter is regular and rhythmic, its
applies it to the divine creation of the
chain? hammering beat suggestive of the
natural world. The “forging” of the tiger
In what furnace was thy brain? smithy that is the poem’s central
suggests a very physical, laborious,
What the anvil? what dread image. The simplicity and neat
and deliberate kind of making; it
grasp proportions of the poems form
emphasizes the awesome physical
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? perfectly suit its regular structure, in
presence of the tiger and precludes
which a string of questions all
the idea that such a creation could
When the stars threw down their contribute to the articulation of a
have been in any way accidentally or
spears, single, central idea.
haphazardly produced. It also
And watered heaven with their
continues from the first description of
tears, the tiger the imagery of fire with its
Did he smile his work to see? The opening question enacts what will
simultaneous connotations of creation,
Did he who made the lamb make be the single dramatic gesture of the
purification, and destruction. The
thee? poem, and each subsequent stanza
speaker stands in awe of the tiger as a
elaborates on this conception. Blake is
sheer physical and aesthetic
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright building on the conventional idea that
achievement, even as he recoils in
In the forests of the night, nature, like a work of art, must in some
horror from the moral implications of
What immortal hand or eye way contain a reflection of its creator.
such a creation; for the poem
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? The tiger is strikingly beautiful yet also
addresses not only the question of
horrific in its capacity for violence.
who could make such a creature as
What kind of a God, then, could or
the tiger, but who would perform this
would design such a terrifying beast as
act. This is a question of creative
The poem begins with the speaker the tiger? In more general terms, what
responsibility and of will, and the poet
asking a fearsome tiger what kind of does the undeniable existence of evil
carefully includes this moral question
divine being could have created it: and violence in the world tell us about
with the consideration of physical
“What immortal hand or eye/ Could the nature of God, and what does it
power. Note, in the third stanza, the
frame they fearful symmetry?” Each mean to live in a world where a being
parallelism of “shoulder” and “art,” as

3. well as the fact that it is not just the
body but also the “heart” of the tiger
that is being forged. The repeated use
of word the “dare” to replace the
“could” of the first stanza introduces a
dimension of aspiration and willfulness
into the sheer might of the creative act.
The reference to the lamb in the
penultimate stanza reminds the reader
that a tiger and a lamb have been
created by the same God, and raises
questions about the implications of
this. It also invites a contrast between
the perspectives of “experience” and
“innocence” represented here and in
the poem “The Lamb.” “The Tyger”
consists entirely of unanswered
questions, and the poet leaves us to
awe at the complexity of creation, the
sheer magnitude of God’s power, and
the inscrutability of divine will. The
perspective of experience in this poem
involves a sophisticated
acknowledgment of what is
unexplainable in the universe,
presenting evil as the prime example
of something that cannot be denied,
but will not withstand facile
explanation, either. The open awe of
“The Tyger” contrasts with the easy
confidence, in “The Lamb,” of a child’s
innocent faith in a benevolent
universe.