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The Lamb                  Poet : william Blake

'The Lamb' is a short poem written by William Blake, an English poet who lived from 1757 to 1827 and wrote at the beginning of the Romantic movement. He lived a simple life and worked as an engraver and illustrator in his early adulthood. His poems have a lyric aspect, meaning they are very expressive of his emotions and have a melodic quality. In his later years, he turned more and more towards religion, seeing the bible as the ultimate reference to all that is good and evil. This is a common theme in many of his poems.

Main Theme :  The main theme of the poem "The Lamb" by William Blake is praise for specific qualities of Jesus Christ and His gifts to humanity. In the first stanza, Blake asks the lamb if it knows who gave it life, soft wool, and a tender voice.

Summary : The poem begins with the question, “Little Lamb, who made thee?” The speaker, a child, asks the lamb about its origins: how it came into being, how it acquired its particular manner of feeding, its “clothing” of wool, its “tender voice.” In the next stanza, the speaker attempts a riddling answer to his own question: the lamb was made by one who “calls himself a Lamb,” one who resembles in his gentleness both the child and the lamb. The poem ends with the child bestowing a blessing on the lamb.

Q1.    Write a note on the central idea of the poem “The Lamb”.

Ans.- The central idea of the the poem “The Lamb” is to praise and the gifts he has given to humanity.  In reference to lamb, it is who has given it the soft wool, tender voice and such a beautiful life. Christ also called himself a lamb and came to earth as a little child. In the poem, William Blake has descried as a loving, giving and peaceful with innocence. The poem, “The Lamb” underlies the plain development of the child’s thought from his initial question of asking the lamb,’Does he know who made him?’ To the child’s own innocence and to the final blessing. The poem is set in a pastoral background and in the world of love, beauty and innocence of a happy child. The simple question of the child is the same as that of countless thinkers over the centuries. The child looks at the world through his own eyes, and deduces a concept of God from what he sees. He finds God in the sweet,woolly and meek lamb. This approach of the child understanding God raises another question in the human mind the question of deciphering God by looking at the world around us. It raises the question about what would be the reaction of the child if he sees a world of drudgery and ugliness. If God is more powerful than Satan,then how is it that good does not always triumph over evil, in nature. Ultimately, it is the faith of the child , which is dependent on the child continuing to see a entitle and joyous nature around him. This is what Blake tries to present through these beautiful verse.   

Q2.    Attempt a detailed analysis of the symbolic significance of the lamb from your reading of “The Lamb”.

Ans : Blake is a highly symbolic poet and his poetry is rich in symbols and allusions. Almost each and every other word in his poems is symbolic. A symbol is an object which stands for something else as dove symbolizes peace. Similarly, Blake‘s tiger symbolizes creative energy; Shelley‘s wind symbolizes inspiration; Ted Hughes‘s Hawk symbolizes terrible destructiveness at the heart of nature. Blake‘s symbols usually have a wide range of meaning and more obvious. The use of symbols is one of the most striking features of Blake‘s poetry. There is hardly any poem in the ―Songs of Innocence and of Experience‖ which does not possess a symbolic or allegorical meaning, besides its apparent or surface meaning. If these poems are written in the simplest possible language, that fact does not deprive them of a depth of meaning.

In the poem “The Lamb”, Blake uses pastoral symbolism to depict nature as innocent, meek and mild. The Lamb is representative of nature as a whole and is described as tender, soft, woolly and bright. Also, Blake draws on traditional biblical symbolism to present the Lamb as pure, innocent, and childlike. The words used in this poem combine to create the image of unsullied purity and simple delight. This imagery advances the Romantic view of nature and of God.

The Lamb is the perfect representation of this view of nature. Blake relates the Lamb to God. The traditional image of Jesus as a lamb assures the Christian values of gentleness and peace.In the poem, Blake uses the symbol of the lamb to paint a picture of innocence. The lamb is a symbol of Jesus Christ. The lamb is also a symbol of life. It provides humans with food, clothing, and other things humans need to survive. The line “For he calls himself a Lamb” is a line that Jesus himself has used. A lamb is a very meek and mild creature, which could be why Blake chose to use this animal to describe God’s giving side. He even refers to God as being meek and mild in line fifteen: “He is meek, and he is mild.” Blake wants to show his readers that God is vengeful but a forgiven and loving creator.

Q3.    “Little lamb, who made thee?” –Examine the significance of this line.

Ans : “The Lamb” is an interesting symbolic poem. It develops the thoughts of a child asking question about the Lamb’s creator, his exploration and final blessing.The poem is directly addressed to the lamb. Though the lamb of course cannot respond, its very existence is answer enough to the question of “who made thee” . The speaker is clearly awed by the lamb. Though the Christian God is often associated with power and might—and even, at times, violence—the lamb is none of these things. It is small, fragile, and innocent. By existing, it proves the delicate beauty of God’s creation, which is why it makes the speaker so joyful.  The first stanza emphasizes joy and comfort,through the mention of the terms such as ‘clothing of delight’, softest clothing and ‘tender voice’ with reference to the Lamb and well provided for and refreshed by ‘mead’ and ‘stream’. The child deduces from this picture of the lamb that God is soft, woody and ‘meek’. With regard to the theme of nature, however, the child’s question is important in the fact that, we realize that his question is the same as that of countless thinkers over the centuries. The child deduces a concept of God from what he sees through his innocent eyes. But this approach of the child to understanding God raises to the question in our minds, whether his deduction would have been same if he save a world of drudgery and ugliness. The speaker then tells the lamb that the one who made it is also called ‘The Lamb’ and is the creator of both the lamb and the speaker. The symbolic meaning of it is almost clearly stated in the poem The Lamb.