Comparison of Two Poems the Tyger and the Lamb

I chose to do the comparison between ‘The Tyger’ and ‘The Lamb’ because they both have similar themes but are concerned with very different aspects of life. ‘The Tyger’ concentrates on the dangers to be faced in life and nature while ‘The Lamb’ celebrates nature as seen through the innocent eyes of a child. Blake examines different, almost opposite or contradictory ideas about the natural world, its creatures and their Creator. William Blake is the narrator of both poems which emphasizes his questioning of creation and religion as themes in the two poems. The simplicity of Blake’s use of rhyming couplets in both poems makes them easy to read and remember. The poems have a rhythm similar to a nursery rhyme which makes them†¦show more content†¦The mighty beast is a whole world of experience outside ourselves, destructive but also terrifyingly beautiful. Blake realizes, of course, that God made all the creatures on earth. However, to express his bewilderment that the God who created the gentle lamb also created the terrifying tiger, he includes Satan as a possible creator while raising his rhetorical questions for example ‘In what distant deeps or skies, Burnt the fire of thy eyes?’ In the 2nd stanza of ‘The Lamb’, the line ‘I a child thou a lamb.’ could mean that the poet William Blake is restored to the state of Innocence by Jesus Himself. The power of the poem, ‘The Lamb’ lies in the question repeated four times: ‘Who made thee?’ and Blake invites us to ask this profound and fundamental question of ourselves. The repetition of this question could also imply that Blake doubts that he who created innocence symbolized by the lamb would also create an evil portrayed by the tiger. ‘The Tyger’ is ruled by symmetry: symmetry between stanzas, between lines and within lines. For this reason, one of the details that leaps out at us immediately is the lack of symmetry between the first and last stanzas, where a single word ‘could’ in stanza 1 is changed to ‘dare’ in stanza 6. Compare ‘What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ with ‘What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?’ The first question asks if there is any power thatShow MoreRelated Comparison of the Poems The Tyger and The Lamb Essay1217 Words   |  5 PagesComparison of the Poems The Tyger and The Lamb In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience we are confronted with a powerful juxtaposition of nature. The innocuous ‘lamb’ and the ferocious ‘Tyger’ are designed to be interpreted in comparison with each other. 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