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.
William Blake (1757-1827) belonged to the period of romanticism. He wrote
The speaker tells us about the coming of Jesus to earth and in a certain way he compares himself and the lamb with Lord Jesus Christ in the way they are innocent and pure as Christ was. In the Old Testament we see that the in the sacrifices that Jews made for God, the condition was that the animal had to be a lamb of one year without defects. It gives the idea of perfection. Jesus was the perfect Lamb because he was pure and innocent as a child and as a lamb. So the child who is the speaker of this poem compares his purity and his innocence with Jesus' ones. Another important aspect that I can mention in order to say that he is comparing them with Christ is that we can find the features given in the first stanza which were applied to the lamb, we can applay them now to Lord Jesus Christ. When he says "clothing of delight" he says that the lamb is soft and that we can find delight in him. We can apply this feature to Jesus Christ. When the poem says "tender voice, making all the vales rejoice" it refers to Lord Jesus Christ when he calm the storm with his words. We can find it in the Bible in Matthew 8. 23-27 or Mark 4. 35- 41 or Luke 8. 22-25. Finally I can say that the title of the poem is not referring to the animal that the child is talking to, but is referring to Jesus Christ, and the prays are for him. Here we can see that the innocence of a child can be compared with Lord Jesus Christ because they have not sin and they are pure and perfect and I think it is the intention of the author when he wrote this collection of poems called Songs of Innocence in which the speakers are innocent children that reflects purity, perfection and innocence.