William Blake: Lion or Lamb?
...ngs of Experience, and “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence; and “The Sick Rose,” and “My Pretty Rose Tree,” both of which were written in Songs of Experience. “The Tyger” begins with the question “What immortal hand or eye / could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (3,4) The speaker is questioning what kind of being could have created such a fearful creature. The speaker then asks, “And what shoulder and what art / could twist the sinews of thy heart?” (9,10), asking what type of physical presence was necessary in order to create such an animal. The writer then asks how once the creator heard the first heartbeat of his evil invention he could continue to create it? Then the speaker ponders the question “Did he who made the lamb make thee?”(20), wondering if the same being that made the lamb also created the tiger.4 “The Lamb” opens the same way as “The Tyger” does, asking the lamb if it knows who is its creator and goes on to tell the lamb that its creator is the one who “calls Himself a Lamb,” (14) referring to Christ who was repeatedly referred to as the “sacrificial lamb” in the Bible (1 Peter 1:19). “The Lamb” does not provide us with a sufficient doctrine of Christianity because it fails to account for the presence of suffering and evil in the world, just as “The Tyger” fails to provide us with an adequate doctrine of Christianity because it fails to account for the love and the grace of Christ that we have in Him because he was our sacrificial lamb.5 Together “The Lamb and “The Tyger” “give us a perspective on religion that includes that good and clean as well as the terrible and inscrutable”5 pain that people experience during their lives. Secondly, “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence is a poem about charity school children of London, who attend St. Paul’s Cathedral for Ascension Day, celebrating the 40th day after the resurrection of Christ. The speaker refered to the children as “flowers of London town,”(5) which emphasized their beauty and fragility. This “undercuts the assumption that these destitute children are the city’s refuse and burden, rendering them instead as London’s fairest and finest.”6 The children were referred to as innocent when the writer said that the children were “raising their innocent hands”(8). Blake refers to the children as lambs, relating the children to Christ and reminding the reader of the tenderheartedness of Christ. The final line of “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence reads “Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door”(12). This line advises the reader to have compassion for the poor, which is commanded all throughout the bible in verses such as James 2:2-4, and others.6 On the contrary “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Experience begins with “Is this a holy thing to see / in a rich and fruitful land / babes reduced to misery / Fed with cold and usurous hand?”(1-4) asking the reader if it is truly holy to see the sight of children who are living in misery in such a prosperous country? The answer that the narrator gives is that the “destitute existence of so many children impoverishes the country no matter how prosperous it may be in other ways.”7 Blake writes that these children’s sun never shines, and their paths are filled with thorns while there is eternal winter in their lives (9-12). Thirdly, “The Sick Rose” is a poem written about love that does not recognize its own fading condition. The rose is used as the “conventional symbol of love.”8 Blake writes in line 5 and 6 “Has found out thy bed Of crimson Joy”, which is an analogy of sexual pleasure and shame that has f...