Thanks, Ben.
The Lamb:
- Blake talks about the lamb and how peaceful it is
- Blake goes on to compare the lamb to Jesus who was called “The Lamb of God”
- The poem uses apostrophe when Blake asks the lamb questions; he then answers himself
- Blake suggests that nature and man are equivalent in a way
- This poem uses Blake’s belief that enlightenment and understanding come from being in a childlike state, yet experience is also required
The Tyger:
- Blake asks of the tyger how it came to be
- Blake wonders how such a fearsome creature was created and whether it was made by the same God who made the lamb
- What does the tyger say about God? The tyger must reflect something of the one who made it and therefore God must be more complex than he appears
- The tyger seems to be a symbol used to represent the evil in the world: which is in seeming paradox with the good represented by the lamb
- Tigers in Blake’s time were seen as vicious creatures who killed on whim
Gray’s Elegy:
- Takes place in a cemetary. He talks about the mounds of earth that bodies are buried in: this poem is about death
- Gray talks about how happy the peasant people were while they were alive; at the same time he mocks power, wealth, and nobility saying that death ends it all
- Gray thinks about all the things in life that people never know, all the chances that people never get because of their place in life.
- The poem ends in an epitaph (writing on a gravestone) that restates Gray’s purpose
