The Full Text of “The Lamb”
1Little Lamb who made thee
2 Dost thou know who made thee
3Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
4By the stream & o'er the mead;
5Gave thee clothing of delight,
6Softest clothing wooly bright;
7Gave thee such a tender voice,
8Making all the vales rejoice!
9 Little Lamb who made thee
10 Dost thou know who made thee
11 Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
12 Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
13He is called by thy name,
14For he calls himself a Lamb:
15He is meek & he is mild,
16He became a little child:
17I a child & thou a lamb,
18We are called by his name.
19 Little Lamb God bless thee.
20 Little Lamb God bless thee.
The Full Text of “The Lamb”
1Little Lamb who made thee
2 Dost thou know who made thee
3Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
4By the stream & o'er the mead;
5Gave thee clothing of delight,
6Softest clothing wooly bright;
7Gave thee such a tender voice,
8Making all the vales rejoice!
9 Little Lamb who made thee
10 Dost thou know who made thee
11 Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
12 Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
13He is called by thy name,
14For he calls himself a Lamb:
15He is meek & he is mild,
16He became a little child:
17I a child & thou a lamb,
18We are called by his name.
19 Little Lamb God bless thee.
20 Little Lamb God bless thee.
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“The Lamb” Introduction
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"The Lamb" is a poem by English visionary William Blake, published in his 1789 collection Songs of Innocence. The poem sees in the figure of the lamb an expression of God's will and the beauty of God's creation. The poem is told from the perspective of a child, who shows an intuitive understanding of the nature of joy and, indeed, the joy of nature. In "The Lamb," there is little of the suspicion of urban environments found elsewhere in Blake's poetry. "The Lamb," then, is a kind of hymn to God, praising God's creation while also implying that humankind has lost the ability to appreciate it fully.
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“The Lamb” Summary
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The speaker directly addresses a lamb, asking it if it knows who created it, who gave it life and invited it to eat. The lamb is then described in its natural environment, frolicking beside streams and running through fields. Whoever made the lamb also gave it its coat, which is made out of soft white wool. The lamb's gentle noises, according to the speaker, make the surrounding valleys happy. The speaker then asks again: Who made the lamb?
In the second stanza, the speaker excitedly offers to tell the lamb the answer. The creator has the same name as the lamb, and indeed calls himself "Lamb." This creator is gentle and kind, and he was once a small child. The speaker, too, is a child, and both the speaker and the lamb share the name of their creator. The speaker then asks God twice to bless the lamb.
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“The Lamb” Themes
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God and Creation
“The Lamb” is a religious poem that marvels at the wonders of God’s creation. In the poem, a child addresses a lamb, wondering how it came to exist, before affirming that all existence comes from God. In the humble, gentle figure of the lamb, the speaker sees the beautiful evidence of God’s work. Furthermore, the lamb is not just made by God—it’s an expression of God, as is the speaker. Through the example of the lamb, the speaker suggests that the entire world is in fact an expression of God.
The poem is directly addressed to the lamb. Though the lamb of course cannot respond, its very existence is answer enough to the question of “who made” it. The speaker is clearly awed by the lamb. Though the Christian God is often associated with power and might—and even, at times, violence—the lamb is none of these things. It is small, fragile, and innocent. By existing, it proves the delicate beauty of God’s creation, which is why it makes the speaker so joyful.
The poem rhetorically asks, “who made thee,” but everything that follows is presented as evidence that God is the maker. The first stanza depicts the lamb in its natural habitat, a beautiful pastoral scene in which the lamb is free to run around. All that the lamb needs is provided for it, making the lamb a symbol of freedom and uncomplicated joy. This, argues the poem, is God’s intention for all His creatures: that they live happy, joyful lives.
As the first stanza asks the question about the lamb’s existence, the second gives the clear reply. Here, the poem picks up on the symbolism of the lamb. In John 1:29 in the Bible, Jesus Christ is given the title “Lamb of God.” So the poem is not just marveling at the lamb itself, but also at the way in which the lamb is God, just as the Bible describes Jesus himself to be God. Both the lamb and the speaker, who is a child, are “called by his name.” That is, in addition to being called “lamb” and whatever the speaker’s name may be, they are both also called “God.” That’s because, ultimately, everything that exists was created by God and nothing is separate from its creator. The poem thus expresses deep trust and faith in God’s work, suggesting that both the child and the lamb are safe in God’s hands. And to emphasize this sense of blissful comfort, the poem ends with the speaker blessing the lamb. By extension, the poem thus blesses all of God’s creation, both praising it and expressing thanks for its existence.
“The Lamb,” taken from the “Innocence” section of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, is a kind of hymn to God’s creation. In the figure of the lamb, the poem sees a symbol for all of God’s works. The poem is an expression of the purity of God’s creation, untarnished by the kind of negative influences that Blake introduces in other poems.
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Nature
The poem presents an idyllic pastoral scene, painting a vivid picture of the lamb frolicking in its countryside environment. The urban world is notable for its absence. Implicitly, then, the poem seeks to highlight the beauty of nature and to portray it as a powerful source of happiness and freedom.
The lamb itself is one part of nature, but it’s also a symbol of the freedom and happiness associated with the natural world more generally, which the poem implies can’t be found in the modern urban environment. The first stanza expresses this deep connection between nature and joy. The lamb lives among streams and meadows. These are places where nature is allowed to grow, and they in turn give the lamb a beautiful and free environment to live in. That’s why the lamb’s coat isn’t just “clothing,” but “clothing of delight.” Nature allows the lamb to be fully itself, without restriction. That idea is also behind the association of the lamb’s coat with “brightness”—this is a positive environment without any of the misery of the city (the kind that can be found in Blake’s famous poem “London”).
The lamb in turn has a positive effect on its natural environment—its “tender voice” makes the “vales” (valleys) “rejoice.” The lamb and nature, then, are in symbiosis—a balanced and nurturing relationship that benefits them both. This balance, in turn, makes the speaker happy and joyful. In the lamb’s freedom and nature’s beauty, the child speaker sees an idyllic way of life. The child feels close to the lamb and its environment, implying that this is an instinctive relationship between humans and nature too. That is, it’s the natural world that makes people joyful and free—not the restrictive, dangerous city.
Implicitly, then, the poem calls on its readers to value the relationship between humanity and nature. It asks its readers to nourish and nurture that relationship in the same way that the unspoiled natural environment allows the lamb to live happily.
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Childhood and Innocence
Blake famously believed that humans are born with everything they need to live lives of joy, freedom, and closeness with God. By making the speaker in this poem a child, Blake argues that people need to hold onto the values childhood represents—not unlearn and reject them through the fears and worries of adulthood. All of the poem's joyful appreciation of the lamb, nature, and God is tied to the speaker's childhood perspective. Childhood, then, is not a state of ignorance, but one of innate understanding.
In the first stanza, the child worships the lamb. The child feels drawn to the small creature, perhaps sensing in the lamb a kind of symbol of himself: innocent, vulnerable, and joyful. The child’s ability to appreciate and understand the lamb brings up the question of whether this is something that adults can do in the same way. Adulthood, with all its troubles, can keep people from appreciating the world. In contrast, the child speaker hasn’t yet had to encounter the perils of the adult world and is therefore able to look at the “little lamb” in this uncomplicated light. But Blake suggests that this is not a naïve perspective. Rather, it’s a kind of enlightenment. The second stanza makes this point clearer.
Though the child expresses wonder at the lamb’s existence, the child is nonetheless able to intuitively understand “who made” the lamb. That is, the child instinctively understands that the lamb is an expression of God’s design—and that the child, too, is a part of this design. The child refers to Jesus, pointing out that he—the savior of humankind—was also born into the world with all the innocence, vulnerability, and curiosity of a child. Jesus was God himself, showing that childhood is, in fact, something sacred. To underline this link between the lamb, the child, and God, the speaker states that “we are called by his name.” That is, they are unified because they are all a part of God.
Childhood, then, is not presented as something to grow out of in the way that people often think of it now. Instead, it is an enlightened way of seeing the world that the poem implores its readers to retain—in doing so, it argues, they will see the joy and beauty that surround them.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Lamb”
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Lines 1-3
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.The poem introduces its main theme right at the start. From the first line onward, the poem focuses on the nature of creation (and, indeed, the creation of nature). The first three lines—and the rest of the stanza—set up a question that the second stanza will answer. While the poem specifically discusses the lamb, the lamb is also a kind of representative of the entirety of God's creation.
Behind the poem's opening question is a sense of marvel at the world God has made. The speaker uses apostrophe to address the lamb and ask it whether it has any understanding of its own existence. The lamb is a delicate and vulnerable figure, represented by the sweetness of the alliteration "little lamb." In fact, the first three lines are very euphonic, balancing delicate consonants with assonant /e/ and /o/ sounds that are pleasing to the ear. From the beginning, then, a link is drawn between beauty, nature, and God. The poem is in part a hymn to the majesty of God's creation, and so the sounds throughout are appropriately beautiful.
There is also a kind of personification at play here. The speaker addresses the lamb as if it might understand the question and even offer a response. However, it's more nuanced than pretending that lambs can speak. Because the lamb is an expression of God (as outlined in the second stanza) and his creation, the lamb's mere existence is already a part of the conversation. That is, the lamb can provide an answer without being able to speak, and the implied personification underscores this point.
Finally, the mention of "giving life" and "bidding" the lamb to "feed" (which essentially means inviting or encouraging the lamb to eat) highlights the idea that God is the great designer of the universe—it exists because of his will and guidance. This is an expression of what is called the teleological theory of God, which argues that the universe was made by God with a particular design in mind.
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Lines 4-8
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! -
Lines 9-12
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee! -
Lines 13-15
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild, -
Lines 16-20
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.
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“The Lamb” Symbols
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The Lamb
As well as being the star of the poem, the lamb is also an important symbol. In part, the lamb represents God's divine creation. For the speaker, there is something so innately wonderful about the lamb that its very existence seems to celebrate God's powers. Furthermore, the lamb showcases God's capacity for tenderness and gentleness, two traits which easily link to the idea of the Lord as a loving father. Because the lamb is vulnerable, God is shown to be vulnerable too.
But the lamb has a long history of playing an important symbolic role in Christianity. In fact, Jesus himself is described in the Bible as the "Lamb of God" (the Agnus dei). So the lamb is not just a lamb, but Jesus/God too. Again, this reinforces the above idea of God's capacity for kindness and vulnerability—both of which are an important part of Jesus's message.
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“The Lamb” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration occurs throughout the poem. Most of these instances are in the same phrase, "Little Lamb." The /l/ sounds at the start of both words are gentle and delicate, reflecting the way that the lamb is vulnerable and small. Interestingly, this is not the only poem/song to make the alliterative association between these two words—the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" does so too. Though the latter was probably written after Blake's poem, it does perhaps suggest that the lamb easily brings the word "little" to mind. This association also suggests that the alliterative phrase has something child-like about it—it is almost "cutesy," like the lamb itself. This connection helps support the poem's overall argument that childhood is an important state in and of itself, not just a passage to adulthood. This point is especially important because the lamb here is also a symbol for Jesus.
The other example of alliteration comes in line 15, with /m/ sounds linking "meek" and "mild" together. Like repeated alliteration on the /l/ sound, this is intended to evoke tenderness and gentleness in keeping with the figure of the lamb. This line is also an allusion to Matthew 5:5 from the Bible: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."
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Allusion
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Assonance
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Apostrophe
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Anaphora
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Diacope
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Epizeuxis
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Enjambment
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Refrain
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Euphony
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Epistrophe
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"The Lamb" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Thee
- Dost
- Thou
- O'er
- Mead
- Vale
- Meek
- Mild
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An archaic form of "you."
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Lamb”
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Form
"The Lamb" has a deceptively simple form, consisting of two ten-line stanzas. This structure frames the poem as a question in the first stanza and an answer in the second.
The first stanza poses the question to the lamb and to the poem's reader: Who made the lamb? In other words, who created the world and all the beauty it contains?
The second stanza gives the emphatic answer: God created the lamb and the world. This stanza presents an idea of oneness, suggesting that the lamb, the child speaker, Jesus, God, and indeed the entire world are all part of God's creation and thereby an expression of God himself. In essence, the poem argues in favor of what's called the teleological theory of God, which is that the beauty and complexity of the world demonstrate that there is an intelligent designer behind it all.
To further hint at this idea of intelligent design, the form of the poem is also symmetrical. Lines 1,2, 9, 10, 19 and 20 are all similar addresses directly to the lamb, functioning as the start and end of each stanza. The six lines in the middle of each stanza give evidence of God's existence and divine will. The symmetrical structure of the poem is intended to represent the beauty and purposefulness of God's creation.
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Meter
The meter of "The Lamb" is extremely regular, which helps the poem feel simple and purposeful. It's worth remembering here that Blake initially intended this poem and the others in Songs of Innocence to, as the name suggests, be sung. The meter thus has a lyric quality that is similar to many of the church hymns of Blake's day.
In essence, the meter can be described as trochaic, but most lines have a catalectic final foot (catalexis just means one of the syllables has been taken away). This meter is steady throughout, with the lines that make up the refrain—the direct addresses to the lamb—being purely trochaic trimeter. For example, lines 1 and 2 read:
Little | Lamb who | made thee
Dost thou | know who | made theeLines 3 to 8 and 13 to 18—the middle sections of each stanza—have an extra stressed syllable at the end of each line (without the corresponding weak syllable, which is why they are catalectic). This pattern very much lends itself well to being sung, and to rhyming as well. Take line 7 and 8, for example, which could be classified as catalectic trochaic tetrameter:
Gave thee | such a | tender | voice,
Making | all the | vales re- | -joice!Overall, the steady (and symmetrical) meter lends the poem its emphatic quality, which is important for getting across the speaker's enthusiasm for the lamb and, more generally, God's creation.
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme is very simple in "The Lamb," with the lines falling into rhyming couplets throughout. Each stanza follows its own series of rhymes in the form:
AABBCCDDEE
This simplicity reflects the simplicity of the poem's central message. Look around, the poem seems to say, and marvel in the majesty of God's creation. The couplets also have a unifying sound, with the togetherness of the rhymes mirroring the affinity that the speaker feels with the lamb and the way that the entire world is portrayed as interconnected because of God's divine will. The couplets also sound like they could be song lyrics, which helps to make the poem feel even more joyful—it's as though the speaker cannot contain a sense of happiness when looking at the lamb and bursts into song to express this joy.
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“The Lamb” Speaker
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The speaker in "The Lamb" is someone in awe of God's creation. In the small and vulnerable figure of the lamb, the speaker sees evidence of God's majesty. This makes the speaker joyous, and the whole poem can be interpreted as the speaker's hymn of praise to God.
In line 17, the reader learns a bit more about who the speaker actually is. Here, the speaker claims to be a child. This revelation that the insightful speaker is actually a child helps make the case that childhood is not a state of ignorance—instead, it is a time of wisdom, in which the child is able to perceive the interconnectedness of God's creation and understand how it is all an expression of God's will.
In another sense, this reference that the speaker makes to being a child can also be read as stating that, as a human being, the speaker is a child of God. Perhaps, then, the speaker is not a literal child, but rather someone who believes in God and has managed to maintain a child's insightful perspective as a result. Either way, the speaker believes that all living creatures are part of God, and so the speaker is, in a way, God as well.
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“The Lamb” Setting
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The poem doesn't define its setting too clearly—the lines could ultimately be spoken anywhere. However, the first stanza conjures an idyllic pastoral scene, describing the lamb in its ideal natural habitat. This is a countryside of streams and fields, sunshine and valleys. By implication, it is categorically not the industrial urban environment that Blake critiques elsewhere (particularly in his poem "London"). The lamb's natural environment is therefore intimately linked to its happiness and the happiness that the speaker feels in observing, contemplating, and talking to the lamb.
The second stanza is more abstract in its setting, dealing philosophically with the relationship between the lamb, the speaker, the world, and God. In this sense, the setting can also be interpreted as the entirety of God's creation—because, in the poem's view, everything in the world is connected by God's design.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Lamb”
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Literary Context
"The Lamb" was published as part of the Innocence section of William Blake's best-known work, Songs of Innocence and Experience (first published in 1794, though Innocence was published individually a few years prior). This book of poems is essentially a didactic designed to express specific morals, though Blake resists oversimplifying difficult situations. His themes of innocence and experience relate closely to the Biblical ideas of the Garden of Eden and the Fall, and Blake's work is generally full of such opposites: childhood vs. adulthood, life vs. death, freedom vs. imprisonment. This poem exemplifies that trend through its focus on joy and love vs. oppression and rigidity.
A key poetic influence on Blake was John Milton, whose Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained also creatively examined humankind's relationship to God. But Blake was also a wide reader of religious scholarship, which undoubtedly played a formative role in his poetry. For example, the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish Lutheran theologian, can be seen in the way Blake depicts the fundamental spirituality of humanity.
Blake was not well-known as a poet in his time, and many of his contemporaries considered him to be a madman. He worked primarily as a painter, printmaker, and engraver, and he felt that his poetry was misunderstood in his era. He did not enjoy the success of some of the other poets associated with the same time period, such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge. This sense of isolation gives Blake's poetry a radical and prophetic quality; his poems often seem like small acts of rebellion against the status quo of the day.
Also important to Blake's work is the idea of the visionary—there are many accounts of Blake witnessing angels or other spiritual phenomena, and these experiences play into the prophetic quality of his writing. He is often grouped together with the Romantic poets and his work does share certain common ground with the Romantic ideals that dominated the late 17th and early 18th centuries. These ideals include the importance of childhood, the imagination, and the power of nature. However, his life and writings are distinct enough that it may make more sense to regard him as a singular entity in English literature, rather than as a solely Romantic poet.
Finally, "The Lamb" is a kind of song of praise, and the meter is very close in sound to some of the popular hymns of Blake's day. In the poem's allusions to the Bible's description of Jesus as the Lamb of God (the Agnus Dei) and Jesus's own words—that the "meek shall inherit the earth"—the Bible itself is an integral part of the literary context of the poem.
Historical Context
William Blake was a deeply religious man, but he was highly critical of the Church of England, and of organized religion more generally. He was born to a family of Dissenters, a group of English Protestants who broke away from and rebelled against the Church of England. Questioning the religious status quo was therefore instilled in Blake from a very young age. He saw top-down religious structures as restrictions on individual liberties, and as obstacles to the direct relationship between humankind and God.
It's notable that in this deeply religious poem there is no mention of the official church. Instead, the reader is presented with a close communion between nature, humanity, and God—which is how Blake felt religion should be. Blake's rebellious streak also owed something to the American and French revolutions, which gave thinkers opportunities to dream of better forms of society (though the revolutions didn't necessarily fulfill those promises).
Blake was also writing during the accelerating Industrial Revolution, and he saw its economic, social, and environmental changes as threats to humankind. For Blake, the factories of the Industrial Revolution represented a form of physical and mental enslavement—the "mind-forg'd manacles" mentioned in his poem "London." Indeed, "The Lamb" implicitly argues that mankind has lost touch with nature. The poem doesn't mention the urban environment at all, but in its idyllic country setting, everyone and everything is joyful and free.
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More “The Lamb” Resources
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External Resources
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Blake's Radicalism — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's radicalism.
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Illustrations and Other Poems — A resource from the Tate organization, which holds a large collection of Blake originals.
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Full Text of Songs of Innocence and Experience — Various formats for the full text in which "The Garden of Love" is collected.
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"The Lamb" Set to Music — A choral setting of "The Lamb" by John Tavener, performed by the choir Tenebrae.
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Pavarotti Sings the Agnus Dei — A version of the Agnus Dei (set to music by Georges Bizet), sung by Luciano Pavarotti.
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A Reading by Sir Ralph Richardson — The poem read by prominent 20th century theater actor Sir Ralph Richardson.
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Blake's Visions — An excerpt from a documentary in which writer Iain Sinclair discusses Blake's religious visions.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by William Blake
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