“What the hand, dare sieze the fire”
The theme used to describe the lamb is totally opposite from the one used in “The Tyger”. In “The Lamb” William Blake has used the theme of a shining angel to describe the warm, innocent, soft, cute and fluffy lamb.
“Softest clothing, woolly, bright;”
William Blake has used similes, metaphors and alliteration to describe the tyger.
“Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright”
Yet in “The Lamb” William Blake hasn’t used any similes or metaphors, but uses alliteration in two words which are repeated quite often in the poem:
“Little lamb”
To make the poem interesting, Blake uses rhyme, which I think is quite an effective method. In both the poems the rhyming pattern used is AABB.
“Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright
In the forests of the night,”
&
“Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;”
“The Tyger” is structured in six verses and each verse is made up of four lines – unlike “The Lamb” which consists of two long verses and each verse has ten lines.
In both the poems, rhetorical questions have been used and I think that by using rhetorical questions, it makes it easier for the reader to form a vivid image. In “The tyger” William Blake has used fourteen rhetorical questions and most of them are in verse four. In verse four Blake uses heavy, dangerous machinery to describe and compare ‘the tyger’.
“What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?”
In “The Lamb” William Blake has used only five rhetorical questions and all of them are in the first verse.
William Blake has written these poems in old English. I think this is because he tried to write this poem as a prayer, and prayers are usually written in old English. In this poem Blake has described ‘the tyger’ as the Devil and ‘the lamb’ as Jesus Christ.
“When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make Thee?”
&
“For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and he is mild;
He became a little child.”
The poem “The Tyger” belongs to a collection of poems which have been published in an anthology called “The Songs of Experience” and the poem “The Lamb” is published in a book called “The Songs of Innocence”. “The Songs of Innocence” depicts life as it seems to innocent children whereas “The Songs of Experience” portrays a mature person's realization of pain and terror in the universe.
Another poem that William Blake wrote is called “The Chimney-Sweeper”. This has been published in an anthology called “The Songs of Innocence”.
“The Chimney-Sweeper” poem is related to “The Lamb” since it is about pitying and feeling comfortable around a living object. This time it isn’t about an animal, but it is about a boy called Tom Dacre. Blake describes the boy as a helpless, weak and frail lamb lost in a forest full of evil.
The poem is fairly short. It consists of six verses and in each verse there are four lines. Again, William Blake has used Rhyming couplets and the pattern that Blake has used is AABB, the same style used in “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”. He has not used any similes or alliteration, but he has used metaphors. He has used a metaphor in verse two, in the second line.
“That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved; so I said,”
William Blake hasn’t used any rhetorical questions, but his style of writing makes it easy to picture the boy and his living conditions.
This poem is not written in old English. I think this is because as time went by, English changed and Blake wrote this poem in his late forties.
THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPER
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'Weep! weep! weep! weep!'
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said,
'Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.'
And so he was quiet, and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! -
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.
And by came an angel, who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins, and set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.
Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind:
And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.
And so Tom awoke, and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm:
So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
Conclusion:
I conclude that the poem depicts what William Blake thinks of each animal or human. Since Blake was a religious person, he usually wrote about religious visions rather than subjects of everyday life and in the three poems, “The Tyger”, “The Lamb” and “The Chimney-Sweeper” Blake describes his point of view towards these living objects in a religious way. In “The Tyger” William Blake shows how cruel the devil is, in “the Lamb” he shows how cute and innocent a lamb is and he compares ‘the lamb’ with Jesus Christ because Jesus Christ was an honest and good person who followed his religion truthfully. However in the “The Chimney-Sweeper” Blake hasn’t really compared Tom Dacre with anything, but in an indirect way Tom is portrayed as a shining angel because as he has done good deeds and angels do good deeds and that is why they shine.
