Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
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
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 & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Summary
The poem begins with the question, “Little Lamb, who made
thee?” The speaker, a child, asks the lamb about its origins: how
it came into being, how it acquired its particular manner of feeding,
its “clothing” of wool, its “tender voice.” In the next stanza,
the speaker attempts a riddling answer to his own question: the lamb
was made by one who “calls himself a Lamb,” one who resembles in
his gentleness both the child and the lamb. The poem ends with the
child bestowing a blessing on the lamb.
Form
“The Lamb” has two stanzas, each containing five rhymed
couplets. Repetition in the first and last couplet of each stanza
makes these lines into a refrain, and helps to give the poem its
song-like quality. The flowing l’s and soft vowel
sounds contribute to this effect, and also suggest the bleating
of a lamb or the lisping character of a child’s chant.
Commentary
The poem is a child’s song, in the form of a question
and answer. The first stanza is rural and descriptive, while the
second focuses on abstract spiritual matters and contains explanation
and analogy. The child’s question is both naive and profound. The
question (“who made thee?”) is a simple one, and yet the child is
also tapping into the deep and timeless questions that all human
beings have, about their own origins and the nature of creation.
The poem’s apostrophic form contributes to the effect of naiveté,
since the situation of a child talking to an animal is a believable
one, and not simply a literary contrivance. Yet by answering his
own question, the child converts it into a rhetorical one, thus
counteracting the initial spontaneous sense of the poem. The answer
is presented as a puzzle or riddle, and even though it is an easy
one—child’s play—this also contributes to an underlying sense of
ironic knowingness or artifice in the poem. The child’s answer,
however, reveals his confidence in his simple Christian faith and
his innocent acceptance of its teachings.
The lamb of course symbolizes Jesus. The traditional image
of Jesus as a lamb underscores the Christian values of gentleness,
meekness, and peace. The image of the child is also associated with
Jesus: in the Gospel, Jesus displays a special solicitude for children,
and the Bible’s depiction of Jesus in his childhood shows him as guileless
and vulnerable. These are also the characteristics from which the
child-speaker approaches the ideas of nature and of God. This poem,
like many of the Songs of Innocence, accepts what
Blake saw as the more positive aspects of conventional Christian
belief. But it does not provide a completely adequate doctrine,
because it fails to account for the presence of suffering and evil
in the world. The pendant (or companion) poem to this one, found
in the Songs of Experience, is “The Tyger”; taken together, the
two poems give a perspective on religion that includes the good
and clear as well as the terrible and inscrutable. These poems complement
each other to produce a fuller account than either offers independently.
They offer a good instance of how Blake himself stands somewhere
outside the perspectives of innocence and experience he projects.
