The Tiger by William Blake

The Tyger

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And, when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
--William Blake

I love this poem. The tyger is so mysterious and exotic, and a little but dangerous. There's a lot of great imagery with the tyger being forged in some terrible foundry. It reminds me that there's a lot we don't know about God and his purposes in creating a lot of things, and yet we can see that there is a beautiful purpose in even the parts of the plan that seem terrible. At this link, you can find the full text of Songs of Experience along with Blake's original illustrations.

I've decided I'm not very good at poetic analysis. I know that I get more out of a poem when I closely consider its structure, imagery, and word choice. My problem is that when I try to write it down, it seems so dead when compared with the original words. If you want analysis of this poem, or others that I post, there are plenty of sites that will provide that for you.

For my own personal study, I enjoy using the books that Mom bought me at the LCCC library discard sale. They're titled Off The Ground and are written/compiled by Alexander Haddow and William Kerr. They were printed in the 1930's in the United Kingdom, and are charming. For one thing, they are full of old ballads and poems that don't make it into the modern anthologies of formless non-rhyming stuff. The authors also assume that the reader is also in the UK in the 30's, so there are odd moments when you realize that he's talking about something entirely different than you'd assumed. Take for instance the introduction to The Minstrel at the Gate in book one: "Rokeby, from which the following stanzas are taken, is a long poem telling a story of the Civil War. It was a summer evening in the year 1644..." Suddenly you realize that he's not talking about the American Civil War, but the one where England's King lost his head! I like being reminded that I'm not the center of the universe sometimes.

They ask four or five questions at the end of each poem, mostly to get you to pay attention to how the rhythm and word choice add or detract from the mood. They'll often put two poems on the same subject, or a poem and a prose description of the same event together to compare the effects of each. What I especially like, though is that they are generally open ended questions, and the "answers" are all hidden away at the back of the book. This tells me that the authors thought that my opinion about the poem is at least as valuable as theirs, and they're only there to show me how to really decide how and why I feel that way. The books are out of print, but you can find them on rare book websites pretty easily.