During the Romanticism period of literature, works took on many different features including the turning in upon the ego and a heightened scrutiny of human personality. William Blake uses this characteristic to a great extent in “ The Lamb ” and “ The Tyger ” from The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience severally. Throughout his work “ The Lamb, ” Blake examines the basic goodness and pureness that adult male is born with. In contrast, the work “ The Tyger ” examines the corruptness of adult male and the immoralities that are exposed when society takes clasp of one of God ‘s beautiful creative activities.
Before doing an observation about how Blake used this method, we must foremost understand what it means to turn in upon the ego and analyze human personality. Harmonizing to onlinedictionary.com to turn in upon agencies, “ To alter the signifier, quality, facet, or consequence of ; to change ; to transfigure ; to change over ; to transform. ” By this definition, Blake is literally looking at himself in an attempt to alter the quality of what he is and understand how God could hold allowed his animals to hold become so atrocious. He is analyzing what adult male is at the beginning and what adult male becomes in each of these plants. Blake wants to cognize how something that started out every bit guiltless as the lamb, has become as evil and corrupted as the tyger.
In William Blake ‘s work “ The Lamb, ” Blake examines the artlessness and pureness of kids and their heads. He opens the verse form with the lines, “ Small Lamb, who made thee? / Dost 1000 know who made thee? ” This gap non merely gives us the lamb, which is by and large characteristic, preserved to demo pureness and artlessness ; but it besides gives us an thought about the lamb ‘s apprehension of its universe by the absence of an reply. The fact that the lamb has non experienced life adequate yet to even cognize where it came from or who made it shows that the universe has non yet had an chance to act upon it. Blake besides illustrates his religion and cognition of God in this verse form at the terminal when he reveals to the lamb its Godhead. Blake uses the words, “ Small Lamb I ‘ll state thee! / He is called by thy name, / For he calls himself a Lamb ; / He is mild & A ; mild, / He became a small kid ; / I a kid & A ; thou a lamb, / We are called by his name./ Little Lamb God bless thee. ” With this last portion of the verse form, Blake illustrates his cognition and fear for God and his religion. He shows that God sent Christ as a pure Jesus for the universe ; Christ is referred to as a Lamb and a adult male, giving us a correlativity to compare ourselves to God ‘s image. With the imagination in this verse form, Blake is able to exemplify the artlessness and pureness we are created with and possess at birth.
In Blake ‘s work from the Songs of Experience entitled “ The Tyger, ” the poet explores a darker corrupt animal. Throughout the verse form, Blake is looking at a animal that without farther scrutiny would look wholly evil and atrocious. As Blake examines the Tyger, he wonders how God could do such a thing, which could merely be conceived with the darkest woods of one ‘s imaginativeness. “ Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright / In the woods of the dark, ( dark woods of imaginativeness ) / What immortal manus or oculus / Could frame thy fearful symmetricalness? “ ( How could God make such a thing ) ? In the following stanza, Blake goes on to ground that something so awful could n’t hold come from God or such a holy topographic point. “ In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes? / On what wings daring he aspire? / What the manus daring prehend the fire? ” Blake continues his incredulity by proposing that the animal is non even an organic creative activity but is a mechanical creative activity. He states these inquiries in the 4th stanza. “ What the cock? / What the concatenation? / In what furnace was thy encephalon? / What the anvil? / What awful grasp/ Dare its deathly panics clasp? ” This stanza non merely states that the Tyger was non created of course, but it shows the effects of the secular facet. All the tools used, the cock, the anvil, and the furnace, show things of the universe that are found readily. With this illustration, Blake is able to reason that God who has created the Lamb has besides created the Tyger, but the fact that the animal has become so corrupted and evil still has Blake in astonishment. Blake is accepting but still wonders how the two clearly different animals could come from the same Godhead. “ Did he who made the Lamb do thee? ” Blake does non wish what the universe does to the Tyger and what it has become. He wonders how God could let this to go on to one of his animals. “ What immortal manus or oculus / Dare frame thy fearful symmetricalness? ”
Throughout many plants of the Romanticism, authors looked within to analyze themselves and to analyze adult male ‘s personality. With these two plants, Blake examined non merely the artlessness of adult male when he is born but the craftiness of adult male as he matures and is shaped and molded by life ‘s cock and anvil. Blake uses spiritual facets in his work, non merely to do himself believe but to do the members of his audience see his points of position and to convey up ideas of their ain. The two verse forms, “ The Lamb ” and “ The Tyger, ” from the Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience are great illustrations of literature that expression in upon the ego and analyze adult male ‘s personality. Blake efficaciously does this scrutiny throughout the Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience.
