The lamb is often representative of suffering and sacrifice which is also true in the ballad The Last of the Flock written by Wordsworth. The narrator is first depicted with the lamb in his arms as he begins to tell his tale. After the Sheppard tells his life story of the sheep, focusing solely on his herd and how it grew from a single lamb, the man is inevitably left with only one lamb. The story – a complete circle, of suffering and sacrifice. The Sheppard bases his whole existence on the sheep, the more sheep he had, the more love he had and in the end he is left with neither sheep nor love.
The question must be asked – can love really come from owning property such as the sheep? Mohandas Gandhi would argue that the Sheppard suffers not because he has to sacrifice his sheep for bread, but because he has a sick soul. We as human beings are on a fruitless drive, for something to satisfy the appetite of our hungry empty souls, and until we stop this cycle – we will not stop the suffering. From the context of the ballad we can infer that the Sheppard is poor, but he does have a house a wife and children. The Sheppard creates his own suffering by yearning for things that will bring him money instead of being satisfied with the simple life. Unlike the Sheppard, Gandhi was able to rid him self of selfless wants and live the simple life.
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A suggestive contrast. But I wonder about the problem of poverty. The shepherd does say he was so poor he couldn't feed his children. What didn't Gandhi also say that "poverty is the worst form of violence?" and didn't he advocate civil disobedience against an unjust political system? You make him sound like an advocate for a kind of quietism, which doesn't seem to be an answer for the poor shepherd.
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