WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) W.B. was considered a pre-romantic poet because he introduced elements of Romantic Age in his poetry.

The Romantic Age was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement which was born in Europe toward the end of 18th century. At first, the term romantic meant strange, unusual. W.B. worked as a drawer, a painter, an engraver (sb who cut or carve a text or a design on a hard surface) and a poet. W.B. was a very atypical poet, in fact he belonged to the lower class and he didnt receive a formal education as the poets who belonged to the upper class were used to. W.B. regarded himself as a seer, a prophet, inspired by divine messages and was convinced that intellect broke down imagination, which is the only guide to truth. In fact he claimed that he had visions which helped him to escape from the reality around him: for example he reported that he had the vision of a tree full of angels when he was eight. W.B. was a revolutionary and at first he found much to be enthusiastic about in the French Revolution and its ideals (freedom, justice and brotherhood), in fact he believed that only a revolution would abolish injustice and repression. But when the French Revolution turned into the Terror Period, he got deeply disillusioned of it. W.B. was against any kind of institution because he thought that those deprived people of their freedom, spontaneity and therefore of their happiness, because the only way to be happy is to live freely. Blake was an English Dissenter (sb who is a member of a not established Church) and he actively opposed the doctrines of the Anglican Church, which told its members to suppress their feelings. Blake showed how he believed this was wrong through his poems in Songs of Experience. Moreover he always sided with the poor people. SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE Songs of innocence and of experience is an illustrated collection of poems by William Blake, which appeared in two phases. First of all, in 1789 W.B. published Songs of innocence, which is a collection of poems focusing on the figure of the child and theme of innocence. In 1794, W.B. widened his collection, publishing again his collection with the title Songs of Innocence and of Experience showing the Two contrary States of the Human Soul. "Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton's existential states of "Paradise" and the "Fall. W.B intended the two collections to be opposite and complementary and the two sets of poems should be read together. The poet saw Innocence as state of freedom and happiness, which is related to childhood because the children represent the free power of imagination. The tone of these poems is naive and childlike and the style clear and poignant. The poems of the Songs of Experience are the result of a disillusionment and show that innocence was corrupted and destroyed by experience, which is a part of life. The tone of these poems is dark and threatening and sounds as a cry against the tyranny and injustice that Blake saw around him. However W.B. was aware that innocence alone cannot reach wisdom and recognised the importance of experience in the development of the human soul. The human soul consists of two opposite states: attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are necessary to Human existence, in fact without contraries there is no progression.

THE LAMB The distinctive feature of the first stanza is the amount of questions which are directed to the animal. Contrary to the poem The Tyger, the second stanza provides the answers to the questions posed in the first. The picture of The Lamb's feeding "by the stream and o'er the mead" (=meadow) is a beautiful one, which suggests God's kindness in creation, and has an echo of similar descriptions in the Old Testament book of Psalms (especially Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want") and the parables of Jesus. In the second stanza, Blake reminds The Lamb, and us, that the God who made The Lamb, also is like The Lamb. As well as becoming a child (like the speaker of the poem) Jesus became known as The Lamb of God: Jesus was crucified during the Feast of the Passover (celebrating the Jews' escape from Egypt) when lambs were slaughtered in the temple at Jerusalem. This was believed to take away the sins of the people who took part in the feast. So when Jesus was killed, for the sins of all people, according to the Christian faith, He came to be called The Lamb of God. Although this is an image mainly of meekness and self-sacrifice, Jesus appears as a Lamb with divine powers, who defeats the Anti-Christ and saves mankind. The Lamb is meek, mild, tender, vulnerable and harmless. The poet is like a child because the child represent the free power of imagination. A child is innocent like a lamb. The state of innocence coincides with imagination, with the freedom of the childhood, which represents God operating in the human soul. There is a sort of identity among the lamb, the God and the poet. The Lamb is divided into two stanzas; the tone of the second stanza is more religious, we can see this faith in lines 19-20 where the poet says: Little lamb God bless thee The language used is very simple and tender, while the rhyme scheme is: AA BB CC DD In this song there are a lot of archaisms, for example thee or thou; there are also a lot of alliterations: Little lamb... in line 11 or He is meek & he is mild... in line 15. Alliterations, repetitions and assonance contribute to create musicality but also to suggest nursery rhymes and to emphasise the idea of harmony. THE TYGER Blake's spelling in the title (The Tyger) at once suggests the exotic or alien quality of the beast. The first stanza starts pointing out the contrast of the dark "forest of the night" (which suggests a dark, unknown and hostile world of chaos before the creation) and the intense "burning" brightness of the tiger's colouring: Blake writes here with a painter's eye. The image of forest of the night recalls the dark wood which is described in the Divine Comedy by Dante. Contrary to what happens in the poem The Lamb, the creation of the tiger is not a religious act, but a manual work. In fact the creator of the tiger works as a blacksmith. The last but one stanza takes us back to Genesis: on each of the six days (He rested on the seventh) God looked at His work and "saw that it was good". God is represented as being pleased with His creation, but Blake wonders whether this can be true for the tiger. In fact Blake wonders whether it is possible that the same person who creates the lamb, which is innocent, mild, meek and tender, creates also the tiger, which is fierce, active, predatory, dreadful and a symbol of powerful because it has been made from fire. The poem starts and ends in the same way except for the verb could which turns into dare, this wants to underline the fact that the creator is somebody who has the ability but also the courage to create the tiger.

Blake imagines the tiger as the embodiment of God's power in creation: the animal is terrifying in its beauty, strength, complexity and vitality. The tiger is referred to as fearful symmetry because the poet wants to underline that the tiger is frightening and beautiful at the same time. The poem is divided into stanzas and contains some mythological references as Icarus and Prometheus.