William Blake was a famous English poet and painter largely unrecognized during his lifetime, unfortunately. However, as time went by, the society recognized the value of Blake’s writings. Today, William Blake is known as a substantial figure in the history of poetry and arts of the Romantic Age. His poetry is characterized by contemporaries as prophetic and insightful (Clark and Whittaker 91). The ideas Blake presented in his poems were far beyond the understanding of his contemporaries; the poet was ahead of his time. William Blake lived his life as a foreteller contributing to cultural diversity of England in particular and Europe in general. This paper will compare two of his most popular poems – The Lamb and The Tyger in order to illustrate the genius of William Blake and have a detailed look at his mastery.
The two poems that will be discussed in this essay belong to different collections. Moreover, they belong to different worlds. In 1789, William Blake published a collection of nineteen poems called Songs of Innocence (which contained The Lamb). Five years later, in 1794, Blake printed a collection of twenty-six poems entitled Songs of Experience (which contained The Tyger) (Osorio et al. 118). These collections illustrate two different aspects of life and human nature. One contains poems about the pure and fragile world of childish dreams and expectations while another concentrates on the topic of a hard destiny of a human being. The universe appears very different from these two opposite standpoints. This difference is the key subject of comparison between the collections as well as the poems.
The Tyger is a poem that reveals the darkest sides of the world through metaphoric image of a mysterious beast that keeps the secrets of human nature in his frightening entity. The poem starts with a question to the tiger:
“What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (Blake 42).
Blake emphasizes the beauty of a mysterious tiger underlining his horrific capacity for violence at the same time. With constant and successive questioning that forms the structure of the poem, William Blake aspires to find out what kind of God would create such dreadful and fearful creature and for what reason. This is the line that connects The Tyger and The Lamb. Blake asks how these two such polar entities could be created by the same creator. The tiger and the lamb symbolize the evil and the good, and the poet seeks explanation for the creation of both.
As it was already mentioned, The Tyger symbolizes the moral decay and evil in the world while The Lamb is the image of innocence and purity. The Tyger makes the reader think of the unexplainable mystery of life, about the great and complex universe we are all a part of. It focuses on God’s power that defines the destiny of all living creatures on the Earth. On the other hand, The Lamb turns to pure and innocent faith of a child not burdened with complex and onerous questions of being and not yet darkened by the evil and bitter experience.
In The Lamb, Blake also begins with questions:
“Little Lamb who made theeDost thou know who made theeGave thee life & bid thee feed.” (8).
However, on the contrast with The Tyger, Blake gives an answer to these questions in the second part of the poem telling the little lamb that he was created by The Lamb who embodies the God and that we all are called by his name (8). In this poem, the God is presented as pure and innocent entity that intends to make the world good, pure, and innocent as well. It seems like a childish worldview but William Blake was not a child who could believe such illusion. Blake demonstrated the seeming perfection of the world to disclose and diminish it later in his subsequent collection of poems.
The God as the creator of both, the tiger and the little lamb has the central role in Blake’s poetry. Combining these two poems, one can see the diversity of the world and human nature. It becomes apparent that the world cannot be only good or only bad. There is not only happiness, or evil in this universe. Blake’s poems reveal that the world cannot be divided into black and white. It has many shades of grey, many aspects that make it complex and diverse, and, perhaps, more magnificent and divine.
When read them together, The Tyger and The Lamb become the unified and logical writing that brings up the ultimate questions about life, being, human nature, and the universe. The major topic of these poems is the diversity of the world. William Blake illustrates this diversity through presenting the two opposite sides of life that also are parts of every living creature’s nature (Schlieper 85). Through the contrast, one can see the true image of reality that is complex and sometimes unexplainable. The poetry of William Blake reveals the beauty of the world with every aspect of it, either good or evil.
Bibliography
Blake, William. Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Waiheke Island: Floating Press, 2009. Internet resource.
Chesterton, G.K. William Blake. Breinigsville, PA: Nabu Press, 2010. Print.
Clark, S H, and Jason Whittaker. Blake, Modernity and Popular Culture. Basingstoke England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.
Osorio, de P. B, Olier E. Hoyos, and Rodríguez L. F. Gómez. Great Britain in Poetry: A Brief Anthology. Bogotá: Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, 2007. Print.
Schlieper, Reinhold. William Blake, Philosopher: An Analysis of the Metaphysical System Underlying His Poetry. , 1974. Print.
