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The Lamb vs. The Tyger By William Blake Essay

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In this essay I am going to be looking at two poems from the Songs of innocence and experience works. These poems are The Lamb and The Tyger written by William Blake. Both these poems have many underlying meanings and are cryptic in ways and both poems are very different to each other. In this essay I will be analysing the two poems, showing my opinions of the underlying themes and backing them up with quotes from the poems. I will compare the poems looking at the similarities and differences between them and also look at each one individually focusing on the imagery, structure and the poetic devices William Blake has used. Firstly I will look at the Tyger a poem about experience. The first thing that strikes me about this poem is the …show more content…

The first stanza paints a picture of a dark forest at night with a fire and a tyger running through the forest, here the writer is using his artistic skills to create a picture in the readers mind. The first stanza asks who could make such evil in the world as a rhetorical question, I say this as you fear evil and the last line says “Could frame thy fearful symmetry” also “what immortal hand or eye” shows that something that never dies must have made evil, this being God. The second stanza ask who dares make this evil and why have they made this evil as another rhetorical question, I say this as the last line again has an important quote “what the hand dare seize the fire ?” The poem then go’s on to question this evil more and asks many questions but doesn’t find any answers. But why is the poem about experience ? The poem shows it is about experience with the consistent structure and rhyming pattern as well as the vocabulary used, the poem talks about how it is hard to gain, comparing it to a fire. Put your hand in a fire and you are likely to get burnt. The poem talks about life at the time it was written, with the industrial revolution and jobs such as blacksmiths mentioned (“anvil” “hammer”) and also relates to the other poem I am going to be writing about, The Lamb. The Tyger is hard to understand at first with many underlying tones and hidden meanings, the poem is well structured and written

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