William Blake’s paired poems, “The Lamb” and “The Tiger”, show a link between the themes of innocence and experience. By comparing two opposite animals and themes, the poems create a contrast between the opposing concepts. In Songs of Innocence, the poem “The Lamb” describes a scene between a narrator and a Lamb. The lamb is shown as a timid, unaggressive, and docile animal that doesn’t have the answer to any of its own questions. When the narrator asks, “Little Lamb, who made thee?”, he follows his question with a direct answer, “He is called by thy name” (The Lamb). In this poem, the lamb’s innocence could represent its purity. The lamb isn’t touched by any of the evils of the world, but as a side effect does not have the answers to any of his questions. On the other hand, the opposing poem, “The Tyger”, paints an inverted perspective. The tyger is described as fierce, worthy of fear, and aggressive. The narrator similarly asks him questions, but does not follow them up with answers. The language is much more advanced and mature. Instead of asking directly about the tyger’s creation, the narrator asks, “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (The Tyger). A tiger has a symmetrical face, with large eyes and patterns meant to strike fear into prey. Even though the narrator is still asking about who created the tyger, it is framed as more of a rhetorical question. The aggressiveness and almost fear of the narrator is shown many times throughout the poem through how he describes the tyger. Through these two poems, the differences between innocence and experience are shown.

The poems are connected not just in ideals but also in the animals they represent. In the food chain, a lamb is seen as prey, living in safe areas and grazing on grass. However, a tiger is a predatory carnivore that must kill to get food and survive. The narrator asks, “Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”. How can two completely different animals in every aspect be created by the same creator, and was the creator proud of the tiger? The tiger can also be viewed as someone who has observed the hardships of the world, and the lamb is someone innocent, ignorant, and young. While the lamb is a “child” that needs its questions answered, the tiger is able to handle the hard truth of killing to survive and doesn’t need the answers to be fed to him. The situations that the animals live in in nature are also a metaphor for the concepts of innocence and experience shown. A lamb is tended by a shepherd, and lives by grazing on grass. Conversely, tigers live in mountains and forests, where only the fittest eat by hunting prey. While the lamb will not learn anything on its own by living its docile life and staying innocent forever, the tiger must learn the ways of the world on its own to survive through experience. In this way, the poems must be read together to be fully understood. While the tiger was at first an innocent lamb, through experience it became the tiger it is today. After reading the poems, the concepts of bliss in ignorance and the roughness of experience have a new meaning. This embodies the romantic ideals of self-reflection and discovery about one’s self. The comparison between innocence and experience can not only be applied to animals, but to the reader. On its own, the poem of the lamb seems joyful and celebratory. “The Tyger” paints a picture of fear and aggressiveness. However, when paired, they create a juxtaposition of concepts where the contrast creates a new perspective.