Thematic and symbolic analysis of William Blake's The Lamb

William Blake's "The Lamb" is part of his manuscript for Songs of Innocence (Erdman, 1988, p. 72). As such, there is a light, jubilant tone rendered throughout, which pervades the poem's theme, subject, narrator, and setting. Within this poem, an unidentified narrator directly addresses a lamb. The principle motif that this work revolves about is the time honored conceit of a lamb representing Jesus Christ and the mercy and kindness of God himself. Therefore, this poem is principally about the goodness and divinity of all creatures as evinced by their innate connection towards God, and Blake utilizes various aspects of the poem's setting, mood, title, narrator, and literary devices to reinforce this principle theme.

Structurally, Blake divides the poem into a pair of stanzas, both of which use a copious amount of anaphora. The primary stanza is about the literal lamb whom the narrator is addressing; the second stanza is about the figurative lamb which the literal one represents, Jesus Christ. The repetition of the word "thee" occurs repeatedly throughout the first stanza, appears in all but two of the stanzas' 10 lines, and underscores the fact that the author is emphasizing the titular lamb as the principle point of comparison in this commonly found conceit. The following quotation readily demonstrates this fact. "Dost thou know who made thee/Gave thee life & bid thee feed" (Blake, 1789). In this passage, the author uses the word thee three times in a span of seven words, to demonstrate the fact that the poem is about a lamb. The frequent references to the lamb's creator and its bestower of its "feed" and "life" refers to the divinity, which was both responsible for this largess and is represented by the lamb itself. This latter fact is well demonstrated in the second stanza by the fact that the author repeats the word "he" as much as he does "thee" in the first stanza. "He," of course, refers to the Jesus, the metaphorical lamb of God. Therefore, the lamb is both literally and figuratively divine in this poem.

A close examination of the diction of "The Lamb" reveals crucial aspects of the author's usage of the narrator and the overall mood of the poem. There is an overall jubilant tone to the language in the poem, which helps to provide a positive mood of wonder and redemption. The narrator describes the wool of the lamb, for instance, as "clothing of delight" and "bright"; in fact, all aspects of the author's appraisal of the lamb -- including the description of its voice as "tender" reinforce the joyous mood of the tone (Blake 1789). Although Blake provides little information about the identity of the narrator, one can infer that the narrator delighting so much in the nature f the lamb is a child itself. The child-like fascination for all of its features (including its voice and its wool) is underscored by the lone description the narrator gives of himself, in which he states "I a child & thou a lamb" (Blake, 1789). This passage is critical to the interpretation of the poem, because within it the narrator proclaims himself to be a child, much in the same way that the lamb is a figurative and literal lamb. Doing so provides an implicit comparison between the two, which is demonstrated by the following line in which the narrator asserts "We are called by his name" (Blake, 1789). The fact that the narrator and the lamb share a calling from God (denoted in this quotation by the word "his") symbolizes the fact that they were both created by him, and share a divinity and goodness that is representative of their maker.

An examination of the setting of the poem also helps to reinforce the theme that the lamb represents God and, as such, all things created by God are endowed with a common divinity and goodness. The setting is fairly pastoral and idyllic; the lamb is described in a setting in which it is free to eat and roam "By the stream & over the mead;," which, when combined with its other physical attributes, is responsible for "making all the vales rejoice!" (Blake, 1789). Nature is often used to represent God and his divine will, as much of the comparison between the lamb and Jesus indicates. The lamb is both a part of nature and exists within a natural setting. Both of these aspects are indicative of God's will and his connection with things that he creates. This connection is reinforced by the fact that the valleys are denoted within the poem as rejoicing when they hear the sounds of the lamb. This jubilant tone in which the setting is described within this poem helps to emphasize the fact that the lamb is a natural creation, existing within a natural setting, both of which are made by God. Even the presence of the narrator in such a natural setting helps to elucidate the point that he also is part of God's creation, and joins in that divinity and goodness bestowed by him. Because the setting is natural and is created by God, it reinforces the theme that all things created by him, including the lamb and the narrator, reflect God's divinity and become a part of it.