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The Tyger

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"The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet

William Blake published in 1794 as part of
the Songs of Experience collection. Literary
critic Alfred Kazin calls it "the most famous
of his poems",[1] and The Cambridge
Companion to William Blake says it is "the
most anthologized poem in English".[2] It is
one of Blake's most reinterpreted and
arranged works.[3]
 The Tyger
 
by William Blake

Copy A of Blake's original printing of The Tyger, c.

1795. Copy A is held by the British Museum.
Country UK
Language English

Publication date 1794

Background
The Songs of Experience was published in
1794 as a follow up to Blake's 1789 Songs
of Innocence.[4] The two books were
published together under the merged title
Songs of Innocence and of Experience,
showing the Two Contrary States of the
Human Soul: the author and printer, W.
Blake[4] featuring 54 plates. The
illustrations are arranged differently in
some copies, while a number of poems
were moved from Songs of Innocence to
Songs of Experience. Blake continued to
print the work throughout his life.[5] Of the
copies of the original collection, only 28
published during his life are known to exist,
with an additional 16 published
posthumously.[6] Only five of the poems
from Songs of Experience appeared
individually before 1839.[7]
Poem

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, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy
heart?
And when thy heart began to
beat,
What dread hand? & 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 water'd 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?

Structure
The first and last stanzas are identical
except the word "could" becomes "dare" in
the second iteration. Kazin says to begin to
wonder about the tiger, and its nature, can
only lead to a daring to wonder about it.
Blake achieves great power through the
use of alliteration ("frame" and "fearful")
combined with imagery (burning, fire, eyes),
and he structures the poem to ring with
incessant repetitive questioning,
demanding of the creature, "Who made
thee?" In the third stanza the focus moves
from the tiger, the creation, to the creator –
of whom Blake wonders "What dread hand?
& what dread feet?".[1] "The Tyger" is six
stanzas in length, each stanza four lines
long. Much of the poem follows the
metrical pattern of its first line and can be
scanned as trochaic tetrameter catalectic.
A number of lines, however, such as line
four in the first stanza, fall into iambic
tetrameter.

"The Tyger" lacks narrative movement. The

first stanza opens the central question,
"What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame
thy fearful symmetry?" Here the direct
address to the creature becomes most
obvious, but certainly, "the Tyger" cannot
provide the lyrical "I" with a satisfactory
answer, so the contemplation continues.
The second stanza questions "the Tyger"
about where he was created; the third
about how the creator formed him; the
fourth about what tools were used. In the
fifth stanza, Blake wonders how the creator
reacted to "the Tyger", and who created the
creature. Finally, the sixth restates the
central question while raising the stakes;
rather than merely question who or what
"could" create the Tyger, the speaker
wonders: who dares.

Themes and critical analysis

"The Tyger" is the sister poem to "The
Lamb" (from "Songs of Innocence"), a
reflection of similar ideas from a different
perspective (Blake's concept of
"contraries"), with "The Lamb" bringing
attention to innocence. "The Tyger"
presents a duality between aesthetic
beauty and primal ferocity, and Blake
believes that to see one, the hand that
created "The Lamb", one must also see the
other, the hand that created "The Tyger”:
"Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"

The "Songs of Experience" were written as

a contrary to the "Songs of Innocence" – a
central tenet in Blake's philosophy, and
central theme in his work.[1] The struggle of
humanity is based on the concept of the
contrary nature of things, Blake believed,
and thus, to achieve truth one must see the
contraries in innocence and experience.
Experience is not the face of evil but rather
another facet of that which created us.
Kazin says of Blake, "Never is he more
heretical than ... where he glories in the
hammer and fire out of which are struck ...
the Tyger".[1] Rather than believing in war
between good and evil or heaven and hell,
Blake thought each man must first see and
then resolve the contraries of existence and
life. In "The Tyger" he presents a poem of
"triumphant human awareness" and "a
hymn to pure being", according to Kazin.[1]

Musical versions
Blake's original tunes for his poems have
been lost in time, but many artists have
tried to create their own versions of the
tunes. [8]

Rebecca Clarke – "The Tiger" (1929–33)

Benjamin Britten, in his song cycle Songs
and Proverbs of William Blake (1965)
Duran Duran – "Tiger Tiger" (1983)
Greg Brown, on the album "Songs of
Innocence and of Experience" (1986)
John Tavener – "The Tyger" (1987)[9]
Tangerine Dream – the album Tyger
(1987)
Jah Wobble – "Tyger Tyger" (1996)
Kenneth Fuchs – Songs of Innocence
and of Experience: Four Poems by
 William Blake for Baritone, Flute, Oboe,
Cello, and Harp (completed 2006)
Herbst in Peking – "The Tyger and The
Fly" (2014)
Qntal – "Tyger" (2014)
Mephisto Walz – "The Tyger"

See also
Fearful Symmetry (disambiguation)
Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright

References
1. Kazin, 41–43.
2. Eaves, p. 207.
3. Whitson and Whittaker 63–71.
4. Gilchrist 1907 p. 118
5. Davis 1977 p. 55
6. Damon 1988 p. 378
7. Bentley 2003 p. 148
8. #3746: "Songs of Experience": Music
Inspired by Poetry of William Blake |
New Sounds - Hand-picked music,
genre free , retrieved 2017-12-07
 9. "John Tavener" .
musicsalesclassical.com. Chester
Music. Retrieved August 2, 2016.

Sources
Bentley, G. E. (editor) William Blake: The
Critical Heritage. London: Routledge,
1975.
Bentley, G. E. Jr. The Stranger From
Paradise. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2003. ISBN 0-300-10030-2
Damon, S. Foster. A Blake Dictionary.
Hanover: University Press of New
England, 1988.
Davis, Michael. William Blake: A New
Kind of Man. University of California
Press, 1977.
Eaves, Morris. The Cambridge
Companion to William Blake, 2003.
ISBN 978-0-521-78677-5
Gilchrist, Alexander. The Life of William
Blake. London: John Lane Company,
1907.
 Kazin, Alfred. "Introduction". The Portable
Blake. The Viking Portable Library.
Whitson, Roger and Jason Whittaker.
William Blake and Digital
Humanities:Collaboration, Participation,
and Social Media. New York: Routledge,
2013. ISBN 978-0415-65618-4.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media

related to The Tyger.
Wikisource has original text related to
this article:
The Tyger

A Comparison of Different Versions of

Blake's Printing of The Tyger at the
William Blake Archive
The Taoing of a Sound – Phonetic
Drama in William Blake’s The Tyger
Detailed stylistic analysis of the poem by
linguist Haj Ross
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