Comparing The Lamb and The Tyger by William Blake Essay -- English Lit

Comparing The Lamb and The Tyger by William Blake In this essay I am going to analyse, compare and contrast two poems by William Blake. They are called 'The Lamb' and 'The Tyger'. I will be looking at how Blake uses imagery, structure and form to create effects and how the environment that Blake lived in affected the way he wrote his poems. In the late 18th century, the world was changing and developing into a new world quite fast. Blake was born in London, the third of five children. Because of the relatively lower middle class status of his fathers line of work, Blake was raised in a state of not quite poverty, but he saw what life could really be like if he was down on his luck, and this he would experience for the rest of his life. When he was nineteen the American Revolution happened and this caused great social unrest in the high and wealthy classes. Then, when he was 32, the French Revolution occurred which signalled the end of the monarchy and aristocracy in France. This, not surprisingly, caused the same area of society in Britain to fear that the same would happen in their back yard. Blake was still writing at the start of the Industrial Revolution, this time became the primary phase in which heavy machinery was used in factories and mines. This created a feeling of great political upheaval and paranoia, shown by the appearance of the Luddites. All these events affected the way Blake wrote, in the way that he spoke about how the power of God can influence us, the world being a beautiful place, but man not being in harmony with it all. Where he lived was an awful place, he lived next to a graveyard and a workhouse. People died in the street and he witnessed it all, but he was stil... ...bles as the one that preceded it. "By the stream & and o'er mead" the missing 'v' in over reduces the amount of syllables from two to one. This is so that the rhyming pattern will be even (6,6,7,7,7,7,7,7,6,6) instead of (6,6,7,8,7,7,7,7,6,6), also most of the rhymes in this poem are visual as well as oral this emphasizes the poems rhymes and thus allowing the message to get through clearer. The language used in 'the Tyger' is, in places, very similar to that of 'the lamb'. It uses alliteration in the phrase, "burning bright" to emphasize how striking the colour of this animals coat is. It also uses the old forms of address and it too has visual rhymes as well as oral ones. But what it has that 'the lamb' doesn't is, it repeats words one after the other in the phrase "Tyger, Tyger", this is used the same way alliteration is to stress the metaphor.