“The Lamb” initially appeared in Songs of Innocence, a collection which Blake first published as independent volume in 1789. He followed that collection up in 1794 with Songs of Experience. The two volumes are typically bound together today and into a single published work under the title Songs of Innocence and Experience. As the titles suggest, the combined entity presents a contrast and comparison in which the poems of innocence are juxtaposed against those poems which confer and experience upon similar conditions or aspects of life. The completed collection uniting the poems of innocence with those of experience features a subtitle which is often forgotten or overlooked which indicates to the reader that there will be a presentation of “Two Contrary States of the Human Soul” which links like poems to each other.
Symmetrical construction is a structural and thematic foundation for Blake and the poem which famous describes that hallmark as “fearful symmetry” is the companion verse to “The Lamb” which appears in Songs of Experience.” The animal imagery in the titles would seem to make symmetrical connection clear enough, but a reading of “The Tyger” makes the full depth of the symmetry clear right from the opening with the first stanza also commencing with the conceit of the speaker posing rhetorical questions to the jungle beast on the topic of creation and being.
The guiding creative principle of “The Lamb” is metaphor. Therefore, it essential for understanding, interpretation and analysis to realize that while the lamb being addressed by the speaker is quite literally a young sheep, the literal aspect is otherwise besides the point and the animal should be understood in terms of symbolism, specially Christian symbolism. The speaker identifies with the lamb as meek and mild children which indicates that the speaker is literally a child just like the lamb is not yet a fully mature animal. The literal ultimately gives ways to the symbolic connection of the scriptural metaphor of Jesus Christ as the “Lamb of God.”
A full appreciation of the irrefutable and inescapable theological subtext of the poem is an absolute and the greater one’s appreciation for the mechanics of the Christian religious dogma, the full will be one’s appreciation of the poem. As just one example which is usually much more obvious to certain readers than others, the entire framework of the poem’s engagement with a question and answer structural foundation, its pervasive repetition and the use of a child speaker all quite specific and precise choices made by the poet to endow the verse with the feeling of taking part in the ritualistic practice of church catechism.
