The Natural State of Man
The poem’s speaker is a child, as is a made explicit in line 17. The lamb is in a state of sheep childhood; a lamb being the term for an immature sheep. This particular poem appears in Blake’s Songs of Innocence (juxtaposed with “The Tyger” in the companion volume Songs of Experience. In telling the lamb that they are both called the metaphorical name of Jesus (the Lamb of God) the entire message of the poem is one that appropriates from the then-dominant Puritan/Calvinist doctrine that concept human beings are conceived in sin and brought into the world in a state of depravity. The poem instead adopts the more radical and revolutionary philosophy of Rousseau which proposed that man in his natural state (as a child) is an innocent creature upon whom only experience can taint with depravity.
Modalism
The child asks the lamb if he is aware of the circumstances of his own creation; not parentage, but on a much larger level. It is a rhetorical, a means of teaching a lesson through catechism. The child teaches the lamb the answer to the question in order that the next time he asks, the lamb can respond appropriately. The lamb and the child are thus unified into the concept of religious instruction. The answer to the rhetorical question is not referred to as might be expected as simply God, however, but through pronoun and metaphor. “He” is the creator, but “He” is also an entity that “calls himself a Lamb.” This is a reference to scripture in which Jesus Christ is referred to as not just “the Lamb” but “the Lamb of God” several times, most famously, perhaps, in John 1:29. So what the child is teaching the little lamb for the purpose of religious instruction to commit to memory so that it might be responded to as rote dogma is that that Jesus Christ is God the creator. This would be qualify as a flat-out rejection of Trinitarianism and and moves the theological philosophy toward Modalism, but not so far as Unitarianism since the deity of Christ is not challenged.
God the Good
The God of this poem is pure New Testament and that is significant because the imagery painted within is pure Old Testament. The child is teaching the lamb about God the creator within an Eden-like setting. Despite the theological philosophizing, ultimately Blake’s verse is an example of pastoral poetry. Nothing is actually said of where the lamb and child are at the time, but the imagery that is mentioned all create the effect of a gentle rural atmosphere: “stream,” “mead,” and “vales” which is synonymous with valleys. In addition, the speaker refers to tender voices, the soft wool of the lamb and the characteristics of being meek and mild. In addition to rejecting the theological hard-line of inbred depravity, also missing from this portrait of God the creator is wrath.
