ASSIGNMENT
Romantic Literature
Name: Meteor Chakma
Roll: 6180 (B.A English Hons) 2nd year
Topic: Critically appreciate the poem "The Lamb" by William Blake.
Ans: The Lamb's one of the simplest poems of Blake. He wrote at the beginning of the Romantic movement.
This movement centered on human spirituality and expressiveness with a focus on nature. 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.
The symbolic meaning of it is almost clearly stated in the poem The Lamb' which is probably the most important
among the poem of innocence.
Here the symbols of child, lamb and Christ are assimilated to each other.
The poem begins with a child like directness and natural world that show none of the signs of grownups.
The poet addresses lamb itself. Lamb is pure, innocent and it is associated with Christ. Being a visionary Blake
invites the reader to world free form reasoning. He describes the lamb as he sees it. The lamb has been blessed
with life and with capacity to drink from the stream and feed from the meadow. It has been allotted with bright,
soft and warm wool which serves as its clothing.
A child who symbolizes Jesus Christ asks a lamb if it knows its merciful creator, its feeder or the giver of its
delightful and comfortable clothing of fleece. He also asks the Lamb whether it knows who gave it such a nice
voice that fills the valleys with pleasant joy and music. The narrator does not wait for any answer. He tells the
lamb that its creator is one who calls Himself a lamb. He is meek and mild and came on earth as a little child.
The song comes to have a meaningful pause at this juncture. The questions are asked and answers are done
and the child turns to conclude the lines in a wise spiritual implication. In the world of innocence there is an
exclusive unification of three characters- Christ, child and the Lamb who constitute the Christian concept of trinity
in the world of innocence.
"The Lamb" is the most representative poem of the poems offinnocence".
It tells almost everything it needs to for making us understand its symbolic theme. The child is a symbol of
innocence, the state of the soul which has not yet been corrupted by the world of conventionalized pretensions
called religion, culture, society and state and other codified systems. This overtly simple poem also subtly
approaches the subject of creativity and the creator.
While the speaker is speaking about a real physical lamb on the surface of it, the subtext of the poem derives
from both Christian and classical mythology. The child is the symbol of Christ, the physical incarnation of the
deity. The fact that it has been sent to feed among the meadow and along the stream indicates that it is to live by
natural, instinctual means. or the Divine law of the nature.
One of Blake's most strongly religious poems, "The Lamb" takes the pastoral life of the lamb and fuses it with the
Biblical symbolism of Jesus Christ as the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." By using poetic
rhetorical questions, the speaker, who is probably childlike rather than actually a child, creates a sort of lyric
catechism in which the existence of both a young boy and a tender. lamb stand as proof of a loving,
compassionate Creator.
