The Lamb and The Tyger by William Blake - Essay Example

The Lamb is meek, vulnerable and harmless. The picture of the Lamb’s feeding “by the stream and o’er the mead” suggests God’s kindness in creation and echoes similar descriptions as seen in the Bible particularly Psalms 23, as well as the parables of Jesus. In the second stanza, Blake reminds the readers that the God who created the Lamb is also like the Lamb, considering that Jesus is known as the “Lamb of God.” The poem seems to be essentially about God’s love revealed through His care for The Lamb and the child and about the apparent paradox that God became both child and Lamb in coming, as Jesus, into the world.

The image of a child is also associated with Jesus. In the Bible, Jesus shows a special preference for children. Likewise, the Bible depicts the childhood of Jesus, showing him to be guileless and vulnerable. “The Tyger” on the other hand is a poem that tells of the realities of life through the magnificence of a tiger. For generations, The Tyger has been interpreted differently but its fundamental meaning is the natural and creative energy of human life, an inspiring shape (“symmetry”) that no one should try to control.

Blake’s poetry tells of the extremes of human experiences, which is richly portrayed in his poem, “The Tyger”. The tiger is fierce, active and predatory portraying the extremes of human experience. The poem encompasses the darkest forces of ignorance which are transcended by the divine, transcendental consciousness which combines both polarities of light and darkness. The questions presented in “The Tyger” are directed at the tiger as well as the reader. These are rhetorical questions because no answer is given and answers to these questions are far from obvious.

Take into consideration the answer to the first question which may be “God”