August 4, 2021

From Gerald R. Lucas
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Songs of Innocence and of Experience, copy AA, 1826 (The Fitzwilliam Museum), object 8 The Lamb.jpg
The Lamb[1]
By: William Blake (1789)

Little Lamb who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?[2]
Gave thee life and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight, 5
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice:
Little Lamb who made thee?
     Dost thou know who made thee? 10

Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek and he is mild, 15
He became a little child:
I a child and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name:
Little Lamb God bless thee.
     Little Lamb God bless thee. 20

Notes & Commentary

  1. . . .
  2. The poem’s opening echoes the form of childern’s religious instruction with catechistic questions and answers (Greenblatt 2018, p. 50). Similar questions are mused about by the speaker of “The Tyger,” but the answers remain ambiguous in the poem of experience.

Work Cited

  • Bloom, Harold (2003). William Blake. Bloom’s Major Poets. New York: Chelsea House.
  • Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. (2018). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. The Major Authors. 2 (Tenth ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393603095.