Posting for Week 3

This week I have read William Blake's The Shepherd.  I am puzzled as to why Blake wrote about a shepherd.  I am not interested in shepherds, so you can see my confusion.  And why does the shepherd praise the lambs?  Isn't he supposed to have a firm tone with them to keep them in line and eating?  I guess it is in an animals nature to know if the person in charge is near, and it may make them feel better and therefore produce a softer wool?  Poems confuse my anyway, with their hidden meaning.  I am a very literal person, black and white, I do not understand underlying meanings.