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The Lamb

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The Lamb
A lamb is a gentle and meek creature that is both daring and submissive. A lamb is very much like a child. In “The Lamb,” William Blake creates a childlike tone through a very songlike form and structure. What this does is give the poem an innocent view, more in the first stanza than in the second. Through the use of apostrophe, the entire poem being an apostrophe, William Blake attributes human qualities to a lamb, the lamb being the listener, the child being the speaker. Throughout the entire poem the lamb and the child are interchangeable, the child is a lamb, the lamb is a child, it’s a metaphor that extends throughout the poem. William Blake uses symbolic language to create extended metaphors about the lamb. He talks about the creator of the lamb giving it “clothing of delight.”

it shows the whole connectedness of all things, it connects it all with the creator, the lamb, Jesus, through the use of the extended metaphor. He tells him how Jesus was just like a lamb, using symbolic language, comparing Jesus to a child. This creates a third connection, a child is like a lamb, Jesus is like a child. " This poem is an apostrophe as a whole. The child is saying that he and the lamb were created by the same being, but it also implies that ALL things were created by the same being. In the second stanza the child is almost reciting what he has learned in Sunday school. The creator gave the lamb, or the child, delight and happiness. Jesus was like a child, for he loved children. "I a child & thou a lamb," with this sentence William Blake connects all things to Jesus the creator. In historical context, the biblical figure Jesus referred to himself as the lamb. That single line has a deeper connotation than it seems. There is also somewhat of a riddle that occurs when the child answers his own question to the lamb. " Children are known for their gentle voices, lambs are not.

The poem The Lamb, by William Blake is a meditation poem written in 1789. It is about a

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