A Child's Innocence

While reading through Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience I was immediately drawn to the term lamb. When I personally think of the word lamb I think of innocents. However, I feel that Blake was drawling attention to this term for biblical reasons. Followers of God are commonly referred to as God's sheep. Dr. William Smith states,"As the sheep is an emblem of meekness, patience, and submission, it is expressively mentioned typifying qualities in the person of our blessed Lord." Blake writes"Pipe a song about a lamb." By saying this I feel he was saying sing a song about a biblical experience, such as, Noah and The Ark or Adam and Eve. A song that would be sung from the experiences of others in order to deliver a message to the listener. Apart from the biblical side of the spectrum I feel Blake uses the experiences of others to inform or educate his readers. I believe that Blake uses the term lamb throughout his poetry to indirectly describe innocence, and also directly in the Introduction to display the experiences of Christians in the Bible. Blake frequently uses children in this poetry. The majority of people throughout the world and throughout time believe children to be innocent, I feel that Blake shares that belief. He uses children in his poetry to evoke emotion in the reader. "And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry, Weep, Weep, Weep, Weep! So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep." The thought of an Innocent child being sold and then forced into chimney sweeping is a thought too sad to think of. That is just one example of the many in our reading where Blake uses the innocence of a child to evoke emotion in his readers. So I defiantly believe that Blake believes children and lamb/sheep to be symbols of innocence.



Smith, William, Dr. "Definition for 'Sheep' Smiths Bible Dictionary."Bible-dictionary.com- Smiths; 1901