The Lamb and the Tiger

The Lamb and the Tiger

These songs are taken from "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience" by William Blake.

In "The Lamb" the poet speaks with his child and he compares his baby to a lamb, contrarily in "The Tiger" the narrator is the poet but the protagonist is a tiger that is a terrible animal that has got the fire in its eyes.

Blake in his poems used a lot the symbols and the metaphors; that's why the protagonist of this first poem is the lamb, this last in the Bible and in the Catholic Religion was considered a pure being and therefore a being nearer to God.

In the second poem instead the creator of this animal is horrible, he punishes, fights and he is opposite to the good creator of the Lamb, that he was a good being and pure.

"The Lamb" is can divided into two stanzas; the tone of the second stanza is more religious, we can see this faith in lines 19-20 where the poet says: "Little lamb God bless thee."

The language used is very simple and tender, while the rhyme scheme is: AA BB CC DD.

In this song there are a lot of archaisms, for example "thee" or "thou"; there are also a lot of alliterations: "Little lamb" in line 11 or "He is meek & he is mild" in line 15.

"The Tiger" is made up of 6 stanzas of four lines in rhyme, in fact the rhyme scheme is: AA BB CC DD and in this song there are also some mythological references as Icaro and Prometeo.

The alliteration in this poem are: "burning bright" in line 1 or "began to beat" in line 11; there are also some archaisms, for example: "thy" or "thee".

The two poems must be read together as it is usual in the poems of Blake