The Lamb and The Tiger
"The Lamb and The Tiger" are the most famous and the most impressive poems of Blake, one of the earliest of the Romantics. They are the matching lyrics connected not only by the naturally contrasting character of the animals portrayed but the questions of both asking who made them.
The Lamb is as gentle and serene as the Tiger is terrifying and powerful. "The Lamb" shows a small boy talking to a lamb which touches his hand as the other sheep graze between a little brook. The song builds up an asscoiation between the lamb and the child, through a common relationship, they have with jesus. Jesus called himself a lamb and became a child. The child and the lamb are united in the incarnation of christ.
Blake imparts a gesture of childhood to "The Lamb" by the way in which he puts the question, "Little lamb, who made thee?" amplifies it, and then asking it again. he prefaces the answer. "I will tell thee". The innocence identifies the nature of the child and of the lamb with the creator.
To the mind in the state of innocence Lamb appears to be a fit symbol of life, mild, innocent and beautiful. But to the mild which has experienced the disappointments and teh sorrows and the injustices of life, its symbol is tiger. The tiger is relentless, strong, remorseless and beautiful. The strength of the poem depends on the effective use of the rhetorical questions and on the effect of certain words like 'burning', 'fearful', 'dread', 'dare', etc., and also on the climax of the poem. The tiger has cosmic power and is awesome. It has a genuinely fearful aspect in his fearful symmetry.
In the context of innocence and experience the tiger is situated to the lamb as its opposite. The tiger can be seen as an image of cosmic wrath and energy, that is needed to destroy some of the dements of experience. The songs of innocence has been associated with light, gentle light but the light of the tiger is fiery as the burns in the forests of the night.
Blake points out, whether the creator of the lamb was also the creator of the tiger and if so was the pleased with his creation. The questions may be related in the conventional religious form- could God create both good and evil. The questions cannot be answered as its, but the truth is that it is so.
Thus, "The Lamb" is a lyrical son of innocence celebrating a child's discover of an indentity between the creator and his creation. "The Tiger" is a song of experience which brings out an adult's wonder mixed with terror at a God, who cludes his understanding.
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