The Lamb

The poem’s idyllic, rural setting (“By the stream & o’er the mead,” Line 4) immediately invokes the genre of the pastoral poem, a traditional literary mode that dates back to ancient Greece and is defined by romanticized depictions of countryside life. Pastoral poetry often harks back to an idealized age when humans lived in harmony with nature. Blake draws upon these conventions to create a bucolic stage for his speaker’s sermon on the nature of innocence—the poem’s primary theme.

The interrogative refrain of the opening lines (“Little Lamb who made thee / Dost thou know who made thee,” Lines 1-2) highlights the didactic purpose of the poem: instructing the lamb on who its creator is. The repetition of these questions recalls the instructional mode of catechism, a set of Christian teachings in question-and-answer format, while also evoking the playful form of a riddle or a nursery rhyme. The mingling of didactic and playful tones acquires special significance when we learn that the speaker of the poem is a child (“I a child,” Line 17) and the addressee is a nonhuman creature, the lamb. The child-speaker addresses the “Little” lamb as one would address a child, using simplistic language and repetition. The choice of audience also reveals the child-speaker’s innocence, as the child addresses the lamb with the assumption that the creature can understand human speech.

While the first stanza serves to elaborate upon the question posed in the opening lines (“who made thee,” Line 1), the language depicts the lamb as a charming creature that inspires joyfulness. The lamb wears “clothing of delight, / Softest clothing wooly bright” (Lines 5-6), its soft and comforting outward form compared to wondrous attire. In addition, the lamb has “such a tender voice, / Making all the vales rejoice!” (Lines 7-8). The “tender” voice of the lamb is reminiscent of the speaker’s own sympathetic, exuberant voice, creating a parallel between child and lamb that is further illuminated in the second stanza.

The first stanza simultaneously characterizes the lamb’s creator as generous and benevolent for endowing the lamb with extraordinary gifts. Using the rhetorical device of anaphora, in which a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive clauses, Blake repeats the phrase “Gave thee” three times (Lines 3, 5, 7) to emphasize the bountiful nature of the lamb’s creator.

The second stanza identifies the lamb’s creator as the Christian God, thus answering the questions posed in the first stanza. The child-speaker, with characteristic exuberance, addresses the lamb with a renewed refrain, “Little Lamb I’ll tell thee” (Line 11), eager to share the good news with the nonhuman catechumen. The child thus assumes the role of a preacher charged with disclosing an urgent, religious message. When the speaker reveals that the lamb’s creator “is called by thy name, / For he calls himself a Lamb” (Lines 13-14), we learn that the child is referring to the Christian God, because “Lamb of God” is an epithet assigned to Jesus Christ in the Christian Bible. By establishing this connection between the lamb and the divine Creator, Blake evokes the divine nature of the common lamb—revealing the spiritual dimension in the natural world—while also alluding to the gift of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

The child-speaker elaborates upon this revelation by defining the nature of this divine Creator: “He is meek & he is mild” (Line 15). The speaker imparts to the lamb that the Creator shares its simple, gentle way of being. Blake thus places the lamb and God on the same level, collapsing the barrier between created and Creator. This breaking of boundaries continues when the child-speaker reveals that God “became a little child” (Line 16), a line that references the incarnation of Christ, in which God assumed a human form. The choice of the word “little” to describe the infant Christ echoes the epithet assigned to the lamb by the speaker, “Little Lamb” (Line 1). The emphasis on smallness connotes Christ’s humility and purity, traits that link him to the child-speaker and the lamb.

Together, the child-speaker, the lamb, and God form a new Trinity, each likened to the other and shown to possess the quality of innocence. The child-speaker tells the lamb that “We are called by his name” (Line 18), a line that has two meanings. First, the line indicates that both child and lamb share a common name with Christ—the Creator incarnated in human flesh and bearing the name, Lamb of God. In addition, the line suggests that all of creation—humans and animals—are “called” to God, meaning that God beckons his creation to him. Blake thus visualizes a blissful unification of humans and the surrounding natural world with the divine Creator, a vision realized through the innocent imagination of a child. When the final lines resolve the poem in a blessing of the lamb (“Little Lamb God bless thee,” Line 19), we understand that the speaker, moved by the angelic vision of the poem, turns to prayer. The repetition of the line here shows that the speaker is overflowing with joy and generosity.