‘The Lamb’ by William Blake was included in The Songs of Innocence published in 1789. It is regarded “as one of the great lyrics of English Literature.”
‘The Lamb’ is the companion piece to Blake’s ‘The Tyger’. It was published at the same time and uses the lamb as an image of God’s goodness and overarching will. The perspective is a little different in ‘The Lamb’ than it is in ‘The Tyger,’ but there is a similarity in that the speaker, this time a child, is addressing the title animal. They speak to the creature and take note of its soft wool and the simple noises it makes. The second stanza answers any questions the speaker posed in the first half. The childish speaker tells the reader and the lamb that it was, in fact God, another lamb, who created everything on earth, including the child himself.
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;