The Art and Poetry of William Blake

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The Art and Poetry of William Blake
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The Lamb p. 870
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The Lamb

• The Lamb from Songs of Innocence is typical of
  one of the plates Blake produced. Notice the
  embedding of the words within the branches and
  vines (which often seem to be dying or
  oppressive, pressing on the words themselves as
  in this poem).

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The Tyger p. 874
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• Most of the plates in Songs of Innocence are
  meant to be balanced or read against the
  contrasting poem in Songs of Experience (one of
  the central concepts in Blake is the idea of the
  contraries, innocence and experience being two
  contrary states of being, two partial views of
  the world. He believed that contraries were
  necessary for any sort of progress but that both
  were flawed, only partial ways of seeing.) In
  this case The Tyger is the contrary to The
  Lamb. Note how

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• the poem asks basically the same questionwho
  made you? Its an easy question with a creature
  such as The Lamb, associated with goodness and
  helplessness, but a much more difficult question
  for a creature such as The Tyger, known as a
  dangerous predator. In this case, though, the
  tiger isnt portrayed as the words of the poem
  might lead us to expect. This tiger isnt
  crouching, ready to attack it appears to be
  almost smiling, a larger version of a benevolent
  house cat. Perhaps the central line of this poem
  is Did He who made the Lamb make thee? In
  other words, did the same God who could create
  something good such as a lamb also create
  something dangerous and bad like a tiger? But
  from whose perception is the tiger bad? From the
  fallen view of experience, only able to see the
  part and not the whole? In Blake, only God is
  able to see the whole and is not limited by one
  view or the other.

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Chimney SweeperInnocence, p. 871
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• In this version of The Chimney Sweeper from
  Innocence, the boy himself (the small chimney
  sweeper) is comforted by his belief system. Tho
  the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm.
  But we, the readers, can only read from
  experience. We can only read the final line
  ironically the view from innocence is no longer
  available to us once we have fallen from it.

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Chimney SweeperExperience, p. 874
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• In this version of The Chimney Sweeper from
  Songs of Experience, note how the chimney sweeper
  has been objectified, turned into a little black
  thing among the snow. Note also the inversion
  of the stereotypical way of using black and
  white. Here the little black thing is innocent
  and good, while the snow, which is white, is cold
  and cruel. The speakers voice here is that of
  the chimney sweeper who has fallen from innocence
  into experience and sees his own misery the kind
  of comfort still available to the chimney sweeper
  in Songs of Innocence is not possible for this
  speaker. Neither the speaker from innocence nor
  the one from experience has the truthboth are
  only partial versions of the truth. By balancing
  us between the two, making us look at the
  contrast, Blake tries to let us see from both
  perspectives at once.

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Little Black Boy p. 870
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• This is an excellent example of how the engraved
  images subtly change the meaning of the poem.
  This poem appeared on two plates in Songs of
  Innocence. The speaker is a little black boy
  born in Africa (the southern wild) explaining
  to himself, and recalling his mothers
  explanation, of his lot in life as a slave. Just
  as the two poems The Lamb and The Tyger
  together ask the question, could the same good
  loving God who would create a lamb also create a
  tiger (with the answer being, of course, yes),
  this poem also deals with the Problem of Evil.
  The boy speaks from innocence and is comforted by
  his answer to his question, that there is a
  reason God gave the black boy a harder lot in
  life, that he has a mission to shade the English
  boy from the harsh rays

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• of the sun. We, however, read from experience.
  We read how the little black boy has internalized
  conventional messages about black and white (in
  the second line, for instance, the little black
  boy says my soul is white, indicating that he
  has learned societys message that white means
  good and innocence). Note how the illustration
  from the first plate shows the African mother
  explaining to her son, presumably already a
  slave. The illustration from the second plate
  shows the little black boys idea of heaven, in
  which he and the English boy will be free of the
  shade or shadow of color and will both equally
  enjoy Gods presence. In the illustration,
  though, in contrast to the boys words, the
  little white boy seems to have all of Gods
  attention, while the little black boy is once
  again off to the side looking on, in a secondary
  or serving position. The words of the poem, too,
  must be read by us (since we must read through
  experience, the only lens available to us)
  ironically. The last two lines of

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• boy are free of the shade of color) the little
  black boy will the poem say that then (in heaven,
  when he and the English stand and stroke his
  silver hair / And be like him and he will then
  love me. Does he mean God, or the little
  English boy, or both? And dont these lines
  present a picture of Gods love as conditional
  (he will love me when Im like him, I.e. white)
  rather than unconditional? And what of the fact
  that the illustration seems to contrast with the
  words of the poem (the two boys seem to have
  different color even in Heaven, and only the
  white boy seems close enough to be able to stroke
  Gods hair)?