He directly contrasts the tiger to the lamb:

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

The tiger symbolizes the violence, dread (Blake uses the word "dread" several times), and terror of the world, and also the ways this can be beautiful and alluring, like the tiger. We ponder what it means to live in a world that contains both the innocent and the predatory.

Both "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" are poems from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, with the speaker of the poems standing somewhere outside these two qualities. "The Lamb" is written almost as a psalm of worship as the child, who is innocent but unquestioning of his faith, asks the Lamb who has made him.  Yet, the child's question becomes rhetorical as he answers it, as well:

Little Lamb I’ll tell thee, Little Lamb I’ll tell thee! He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb: He is meek & he is mild, He became a little child:

Clearly, the Lamb is Jesus Christ, and those who take His name are Christians, and the knowledge of which the child innocently assumes.

On the other hand, Blake's "The Tyger" juxtaposes the existence of "fearful symmetry" against the innocence of the lamb.  The paradox is that "some immortal hand" has forged this symbol of evil as well as the one of innocence and good.  Thus, the speaker marvels that the "immortal hand" that has "dared its deadly terror grasp" in the act of creating the tiger could also create the lamb.  And, unlike the poem on the Lamb in which the innocent believer announces that the Lamb is Jesus, the speaker of "The Tyger" continues to wonder how good and evil can be created by the same immortal hand:

Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye,

The primary symbolism in Blake's poems would lie in how each personify the central animal.  In "The Lamb," Blake uses the animal to symbolize innocence.  The poem centers on the idea that the lamb represents a sense of childlike wonder, and a sense of hope and purity.  The cadence of the poem presents itself in a very simplistic and akin to a child, which substantiates the theme of innocence.  This is opposed to "The Tyger," where the beautiful terror is one of experience.  The animal is depicted in "careful symmetry" in its essence as a hunter and one that stalks its prey.  The song of innocence, as seen in the former, is contrasted in a stark manner to the images of the latter, the song of experience.

Both "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" address the image and role of God, yet they present contrasting views of the Creator.

In "The Lamb," the image of God is presented in an innocent, caring manner. The message is delivered with a rhyme pattern and cadence that lends a childlike song-song quality to the poem. The meter is light; the repetition focuses on the little lamb. We are reminded of Christ, who is known as the Lamb of God and whose nature was "mild" as he "became a little child." The connotations here are the sacrificial nature of the Son of God for mankind. God is seen as nurturing, providing food and "clothing of delight" for his creations.

"The Tyger" paints quite a different portrait of God's creations and, therefore, of God's abilities. The tone of this poem is dark and sinister, with words like night, fearful, dread, and twist shaping the tone. The tiger isn't an innocent creation; it has power and the ability to kill. The question eventually becomes this: Did the creator of the innocent lamb also intentionally shape the features of the deadly tiger? And because this is a rhetorical question, that becomes a question in itself. How and why did God create things of deadly power to exist in the same world as the innocent lambs?

There aren't any easy answers provided in "The Tyger," and those are questions that mankind has struggled with for over two thousand years. The ways the image of God are contrasted reflect the intellectual struggles of man to analyze the nature of God through the nature of His creations.

"The Lamb" appears as a song of innocence and "The Tyger" as a song of experience in Blake's Songs ofInnocence and Experience.

They are alike in both being poems about God's creation. In both poems, the question of what kind of God made the animal in question is raised.

In "the Lamb," the lamb is depicted as gentle and sweet, with "softest clothing woolly bright." The narrator asks the lamb who made him and answers that it was God. This creator God is pictured as a lamb as well and described as follows:

He is meek & he is mild,

He became a little child

Blake's poem, "The Lamb", represents a spiritual exploration of innocence and purity.  The description of the lamb indicates as much with imagery that reflects a sense of softness and child-like authenticity.  The first word of "little" helps to create this mood throughout the poem with ideas such as "softest clothing woolly  bright," "tender voice," "vales rejoicing" (symbolizing a universality regaling in the lamb's song of innocence and purity), and the description of the lamb being "meek and mild."  With the shared rejoicing of the speaker in the closing lines, the poem illuminates the innocent and pure condition of the lamb, of goodness and unity in the world.

The countervailing force to this is the poem of "The Tyger."  Blake continues the theme of perfect creation, although in this setting, it is a representation of the force of death, an "anti- lamb" expression of being in the world.  Blake does not judge the tyger as a force that has to be obliterated, but rather is using the subject to explore the presence of evil in the world.  Whereas the lamb is a song of innocence, the tyger is a song of experience, the opposing force to the lamb.  Blake's description of the tyger is one fraught with the expression of this opposing force.  The "fearful symmetry" reflects a much different impression than that of the lamb.  The questioning of how one who created the lamb could "seize the fire" that gave birth to the tyger is brought out with the "twisting of the sinews of thy heart" as well as the "dread hand" and "dread feet."  This force is not one to be derided or dismissed, for it is present in the world:  "Did he who made the lamb make thee?"  The question that Blake seems to be posing with both poems is how the presence of innocence and unity can be countered with the presence of destruction and fragmentation.  Blake is exploring how the life force that is praised and exalted in the lamb can be challenged by the powers of the tyger.  Blake poises the condition of humanity somewhere in between both of these competing notions of the good.

Blake's "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" are known as companion poems, with the first appearing in Blake's Songs of Innocence and the second appearing in Songs of Experience. 

The speaker of "The Lamb" is a child.  He is innocent and naive.  He perceives the lamb as a reflection of the creator.  The diction, or word choice, demonstrates the speaker's worldview:  delight, bright, tender, rejoice, mild.

"The Tyger" presents an alternative perspective.  This speaker is experienced.  He presents another side of creation and the creator.  The poem presents a similar situation--the creation of nature--from an opposite viewpoint.  The diction reveals this:  fearful, Burnt, dare, seize, "twist the sinews," dread, hammer, chain, furnace, "deadly terror clasp." 

Together, the poems present two sides of the same creator.  The tiger is a killer, but he is not evil in the traditional sense--he is just another side of creation, as well as another side of the creator. 

"The Tyger" is also more complex, reflecting the point of view.  Allusions and metaphors are abundant, for instance.

The poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" are companion pieces, one from Blake's volume Songs of Innocence and the other from Songs of Experience. Both use an animal to explore the nature of God.

The lamb in the "The Lamb" represents the world of innocence before the biblical Fall of humankind. The lamb in the poem is both a literal lamb, a creature "wooly bright" and also Jesus Christ, the deity. Jesus is "meek and mild" and like a child. He represents a world of love and gentle, natural beauty, the kind of place where a child is nurtured and safe.

The tyger, in contrast, represents the world of experience after the Fall, a world of aggression and predation in which the tyger is a symbol of the world's "fearful" forces. Rather than gentle like the lamb, the tiger is "burning."

Both poems question who made the animal in question. The speaker of "The Lamb" asks the lamb:

Dost thou know who made thee

Gave thee life & bid thee feed.