English Romantic Writers - William Blake's Poems - Essay Example

 In the poem “The Lamb”, Jesus is made symbolic to a lamb by virtue of known characteristics of a lamb, which include soberness and gentleness. The core message that the writer was putting across was however built around the theme of hope and confidence in the Christian faith. This is generally seen from the answer that came out of the series of questions that were being posed to the lamb. From the answer of “child’s play”, we see a sense of innocence for the difficulties and hardships of life. Clearly, one cannot be confident of life in such a bold manner if the person does not have a firm foundation and in the poem, we see   Blake saying that the only way to build such confidence in life is to live like the Lamb, who was Jesus Christ.

Writing “The Divine Image”, the writer interrogates man’s search for mercy, pity, peace, and love and says that we are looking for these things from beyond the point we should be looking at. First attributing the four subjects of mercy, pity, peace, and love to the nature of God, the writer points out a strong point that anyone who is seeking to get these features of life should look no further than to himself. This is because as the writer puts it, those features have heart, face, body, and clothes, which are all features of a human being. In essence, the writer is being thought-provoking by saying that we are the answers to questions of mercy, pity, peace, and love and that these cannot be achieved if we are not ready to produce them as people.

In “The Tiger”, Blake pays a glowing tribute to the personality of God, which in the thought of the writer is just like that of a tiger. The point here is that a tiger looks very beautiful but has a lot of iconic characters such as violence and terror. Though the writer is not trying to say that God is responsible for all the terror and violence of this world, he is trying to create awareness that as much as God will be known to be a loving and kind God, he could also be very fearful if we want to disregard him. For this reason, it is better that man accords God with all the needed respect and accolade because as much as God is revered and honored as a gentle God, he also has the characteristics of a tiger right inside him.

In “London” also, Blake probes the individual person as the cause of the many problems and disorderliness that exist in the community. The writer does this by first taking a stroll through the city of London. He then identifies a lot of things that do not go well in the city. These things are simply described as enslavement for the city’s woes. But deep within the lines of writing, what Blake is saying is that there is no single institution or system that is to blame but the very people to whom these acts of woes are applied because the people have the power to revoke their sufferings but they have simply refused to act.

Finally, Blake uses the poem, “The Chimney Sweeper” to address issues of childhood suffering.