William Blake’s ‘The Lamb’, theme poem of ‘Songs of Innocence’: Stanzawise thorough analysis line by line, word for word/ Detailed summary/ synopsis/ Gist/ Stanzawise detailed explanation

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William Blake, a mystic, a visionary, a pre-Romantic as well as a Romantic poet, is best known for his Songs of Innocence and of Experience. In his Songs, we get a reverberating message of the ‘two equal states of the human soul’. In this regard, we should note that The Lamb is the theme poem of his Songs of Innocence, while The Tyger is the theme poem of his Songs of Experience.

However, here, we shall discuss a bit about his The Lamb.

Broadly speaking, The Lamb is a poem of two stanzas with ten lines each. It is usually said that this poem is composed in nursery rhyme. It produces a jingling sound in our hearts, as we go through it. However, this creation by Blake, no doubt, conveys great messages to us, as and when we intend to discover those. It must be noted that this poem is spoken through the voice of a little human child to a lamb. Most strikingly, as we advance reading the poem, we, slowly but surely, come to discern the serious meanings of life in an easy way.

Stanza 1

In the very opening line, we get an instance of alliteration in ‘Little Lamb’. The human child is asking the little innocent animal if the latter knows its Maker or its Creator. Hence, the question becomes rhetorical in nature. The second line of the poem tells us that ‘who made thee?’ is repeated; actually, the question is emphasized in this case. ‘Dost thou know’ is an archaic expression of ‘Do you know’, a question directly asked by the child. Thus, it is noteworthy that, in these two lines, we get an idea of ‘life’, a gift from God. Therefore, the Giver of life must also be the Protector of the same as well. It is crystal-clear to all of us, as and when we go through the third line of Stanza I. The gift of ‘life’ must be protected with food and water. The expression ‘By the stream’ tells us of water, while ‘o’er the mead’ speaks of green grasses symptomatic of adequate food for the little lamb. Line 5 “Gave thee clothing of delight’ is another gift from the Creator, for certain. This ‘clothing of delight’ refers to the fleece or the ‘woolly, bright’ cover of the lamb. We get to know it more clearly in Line 6. As we read Line 7, we get to know that the lamb is given another gift, that is, ‘a tender voice’. Here we come across a case of transferred epithet. That is to say, the lamb is ‘tender’. Its voice is mild indeed. We come to know that when the lamb bleats, everything becomes happy and joyful, as we go through Line 8. The last two lines of Stanza 1 are a refrain of the opening lines of the poem.

Stanza 2

Once again, we find the expression ‘Little Lamb’ in the first two lines of Stanza II. We, in Stanza I, have already learnt that we are given an example of alliteration in such cases. Apart from that, we come to trace an example of tautology, too in ‘Little Lamb’. Here, in this stanza, the child speaker gives us all the answers to the questions that we found in Stanza I. Thus, we are assured of all of them, all the answers in “I’ll tell thee” in the first two lines of the second stanza of The Lamb. Broadly speaking, here we come across syllogism. In “He is called by thy name, / For He calls Himself a Lamb”, it may be noted that ‘He’, ‘Himself’ and ‘Lamb’ are capitalized. The capitalization of these words confirms that all these words evidently refer to Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Lord Jesus is called heaven’s perfect Lamb; the word ‘lamb’ is attributed to the little animal; that is why ‘thy name’, that is, ‘Lamb’ is the nomenclature of both the Creator and the creature. In “He is meek, and He is mild; / He became a little child”, ‘He’, definitely, refers to the Child of God or the Son of God. We must mention that Lord Jesus Christ denotes meekness or modesty and mildness or leniency. It is conspicuous to note that the syllogistic logic is obvious here, as and when we discover that a human child, a little animal, and the divine Child all are designated with the same word ‘child’. This can be found in “I a child, and thou a lamb, / We are called by His name” even better. At last, the poem ends on a note of prayer and benediction with the refrain: “Little Lamb, God bless thee! / Little Lamb, God bless thee!”

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