The composer John Tavener set ‘The Lamb’ to music. the Lamb of God) who made the lamb, along with all living things. The lamb is a well-known symbol for Jesus Christ, and Blake draws on this association in this poem, telling the lamb that it was its namesake, the Lamb (i.e. So begins the counterpoint poem to ‘The Tyger’, or rather, ‘The Tyger’ is the ‘experience’ version of this ‘innocence’ poem. ‘White’ here suggests purity and innocence, that central theme in Blake’s poems of 1789. Blake’s poem gives a voice to a black boy born into slavery, whose skin is black but, he maintains, his soul is white. This poem is about two contrasting ideas of love – the ‘clod’ of clay representing a selfless and innocent kind of love and the ‘pebble’ in a brook symbolising love’s more pragmatic, selfish side.īlake published ‘The Little Black Boy’ in 1789 and the poem can be seen in part as an indictment of slavery.
Don’t get too close to the tiger, Blake’s poem seems to say, otherwise you’ll get burnt. The fiery imagery used throughout the poem conjures the tiger’s aura of danger: fire equates to fear. The Songs of Experience was designed to complement Blake’s earlier collection, Songs of Innocence (1789), and ‘The Tyger’ should be seen as the later volume’s answer to ‘The Lamb’ (see below).įramed as a series of questions, ‘Tyger Tyger, burning bright’ (as the poem is also often known) sees Blake’s speaker wondering about the creator responsible for such a fearsome creature as the tiger. Accompanied by a painting of an altogether cuddlier tiger than the ‘Tyger’ depicted by the poem itself, ‘The Tyger’ first appeared in the 1794 collection Songs of Experience, which contains many of Blake’s most celebrated poems. The opening line of this poem, ‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright’, is among the most famous lines in all of William Blake’s poetry.
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