Romanticism Robert Blake

The style and ideas of William Blake, in "Sick Rose," "The Tiger" and "The Lamb," demonstrate the basic principles of Romanticism. Blake emphasizes the importance of nature and the imagination as expressions of a deeper reality. His style and ideas are transcendental in that they go beyond the ordinary way of perceiving and describing reality, suggesting that there is a deeper and richer realm which is hinted at by nature and the imagination. In this case, "nature" includes human beings and especially their spiritual aspect.

The Romantic style places great weight on language and imagery grounded in nature (the tiger, the lamb, the rose) and in the wildness and strangeness of the natural world. At the same time, Blake's poems are meant to show a connection between nature and human states of mind and spirit, including both the pure and the corrupt sides of those states.

Blake's style in these poems is also deceptively simple, so that a child might read them and take them for their surface meaning. The symbols are powerful though simple, because they are so striking and call to mind so many associations, for both adult and child, for both simple-minded and sophisticated. At the same time, Blake's use of natural symbolism, in the Romantic vein, gives these three poems a greater depth and complexity than it might first appear. While the poems are open to many interpretations, my paper as a Christian, will take the view that they have as their true subject God and His Creation.

The tiger and lamb poems are related as parts of Songs of Innocence and Experience. In these poems, the tiger and the lamb are themselves seen as extremes of the natural world of both beasts and the wild and gentle sides of humanity. The tiger is the symbol of untamed and fierce power and danger, while the lamb is the symbol of nature in its most tame and domesticated form.

Blake is not simply trying to compare these two extremes, however, but rather to praise them both in wonder for their special qualities. In fact, he celebrates not only the tiger and the lamb, but the God who made them, and the "Lamb" (Jesus Christ) in whom the poet clearly believes. Writing about the lamb, Blake employs such a simple style that it seems he could be writing a children's poem. In fact, it could be the invocation from Jesus that only "as children" (in spirit) can a person enter into the Kingdom of God. In the symbol of the lamb, Blake finds signs of the gentleness and joy of the Creator. He asks the Lamb the question of who made it, then answers: "He is called by thy name,/ For he calls himself a Lamb./ He is meek, and he is mild; He became a little child" (Blake 8).

The symbol of the tiger and lamb are the objects of the poet's wonder and appreciation, but Blake is finally most concerned with the Creator of such extreme examples of the visible and natural world. He sees in the symbol of the tiger signs of the majesty and power of the Creator: "Tiger! Tiger! burning bright/ In the forests of the night./ What immortal hand or eye/ Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" (Blake 42).

And in the symbol of the lamb, Blake finds signs of the gentleness and joy of the Creator: "Little Lamb, . . . / Dost thou know who . . . / Gave thee clothing of delight,/ Softest clothing, woolly, bright;/ Gave thee such a tender voice,/ Making all the vales rejoice?" (Blake 8).

From these lines, both the Romantic and Biblical influences are clear, in terms of both style and meaning. Words such as "dost," "thou" and "thee" indicate a highly respectful, even sacred tone taken by the speaker toward the tiger and the lamb. The mixing of awe for the terrifying tiger and the gentle lamb show that the speaker recognizes that the Creator behind them is a mysterious force capable of imagining and bringing to form such disparate entities.

The symbol of the lamb is most importantly associated with Jesus Christ, known as the Lamb of God, giving us the sense that the two poems in conjunction, perhaps, are meant to symbolize the might of Jehovah and the meekness of Jesus.

Blake uses the great orange-and-black striped beast to stand for the mysterious and threatening might of nature in the form of a wild animal. The first four lines of the poem introduce the image of the tiger in relation to the maker of the tiger, or God, the "immortal hand or eye." The poem is made up of questions about the Creator behind the tiger, rather than an argument about what or who God is or is not. The "fearful symmetry" of the tiger's markings which are "burning bright" make the poet stand in awe as his imagination conjures questions about the "hand" which made the beast. The poet asks in the second stanza what depths, heights and lengths