The Great Creation
Good Evening and welcome to another exhilarating episode of The Progress of Poetry. I’m ferrarisosa and I will be your host for this evening’s show. The topic I will discuss today is the dramatic change in poetry called the Romantic Revolt. Since this era, poetry was no longer considered the province of the wealthy upper classes but a more true representation of attitudes, ideas and concerns of society. It has become a vehicle for social comment. This can be seen in the poet William Blake and his social comment in his poems The Tyger and The Lamb. Blake’s vivid imagination of god allowed him to make a social comment on the grand question of creation. Blake talks about a loving god who created the lamb in the poem The Lamb and then in his other poem The Tyger talks about how the same creator who made the lamb made fire and tigers meaning that they both have same creators. The poem The Tyger is a companion to the poem The Lamb. Drawing upon the specific works of William Blake, I will also explore the beliefs and values of Blake and how he used poetry to convey these poems from Songs of innocence and experience.
Born in 1757, William Blake’s significance came in the 19th century and his recognition as an artist and poet started in the 18th century when he was the age of sixty. His work is considered as an intense criticism of industrialisation. During the period of industrialisation in Britain, many artistic movements occurred. Industrial revolutions take over0consisted of artists that were at0differences with the0ideals which it adopted such as, structure, 0discipline, temperance and views of enlightenment. Feelings such as these were translated into the Romantic Movement and in result0stimulated individualism, emotion and freedom. 0
The Romantics were important as their contribution defined and created0the modern world. This was seen first through William Blake as being the first English poet to break ideologies of science and commercialism in an era when the twin0imperatives of industrialisation and system were starting to control human life. The Lamb from songs of innocence conveys the positive aspects of conventional0Christian beliefs as0well as the partner to this poem, the tiger, from songs of experiences which expresses the complexity0of creation, the pure greatness of god’s power.Looking at0the two poems, they both give a0perspective on religion including the good and clear as well as the terrible and unknowable. Both poems complement each other to create a complete account than either offers independently.They provide a great example of how Blake himself stands somewhere outside the perspective of innocence and experience he projects. 0 The lamb begins with a question, “Little Lamb, who made thee?” The lamb is questioned by the speaker, who is a child and is asked about its existence and how it came into being. It is also questioned it’s, “clothing” of wool and its tender voice. The child tries to riddle his own questions in the stanza by saying the lamb was created by the one who calls himself a lamb, a look alike in gentleness of both child and lamb. A blessing is given to the lamb at the end of this poem. The poem consists of two stanzas both of which contain five rhyming couplets. There is a repetition in first and last couplet of both stanzas. The use of flowing 1’s and soft vowel sounds makes the poem effective and gives a suggestion of the bleating
